Myers' work is very impressive, especially reproducing the warp engine lighting effects. However, CGI provides so much more control over the image with less effort than with practical models.
I know, there are some who claim to "hate all CGI", "I can spot it instantly." I bet anything that hundreds of CGI shots passed under their radar without detection because the artists did a good job. Any VFX technique can be done well, or poorly. We had good shots and bad shots in the days before digital. And we have the same today, whether the shot is entirely CGI, or some live action/practical elements digitally comped together.
CBS Digital dropped the ball on the TOS-R space shots, although the "matte paintings" (now called scene extension) were mostly excellent. I don't know if this was time constraints, or directorial gaffes. That is, perhaps a decision was made not to be too glitzy with the renderings, and so they ended up looking like old videogame renders. One example is the shot of the Enterprise flying off into deep space (far beyond any local star) with a radiosity shine that made it look like a toy.
The TOS "aesthetic" always had the ship evenly lit (like the space shuttle in orbit photos), which was because of the blue spill from the background. The VFX artists for Star Trek Continues nailed the look perfectly—with CGI. Granted, they added "interactive" lighting, such as phasers or photon torpedoes casting light on the ship. Myers did the same in one of his multi-pass shots seen above. Such interactive light would be seen in reality.
However, VFX are sometimes less than realistic for aesthetic reasons, or because the Earth-bound audience expects it—as noted by Gene Roddenberry in Whitfield's The Making of Star Trek. Even the highly vaunted 2001: A Space Odyssey had technical gaffes, such as "fill light" on the shadowed side of Discovery while in deep space far from any planet or other body, or putting the cold sleep chambers in the centrifuge habitat. (They'd be in the freefall part of the ship to reduce "bed sores" tissue wear on the somnolents.)
