It's funny, I feel the same way about models. They irritate me due to their fakeness. I can respect the techniques and work that goes into making a two foot piece of plastic look and move like something a hundred times the size, and yes, there's something nice to know there's a real, physical, tangible object you're seeing, but I don't feel that it conveys as any more 'real' to me in a cinematic sense of the word... if anything, seeing things like matte lines, strings, and limited range of movement just come off as more and more hokey as digital restorative techniques make the weaknesses in model work more and more obvious, since in times past, most of the 'zippers', so to speak, were hidden due to bad prints, poor resolution, or an unsophisticated audience that didn't look for that kind of thing.
That's not to say that I think CGI is the end all be all. There's an Uncanny Valley effect that comes from ships that look too 'realistic', just as it does for human models that are too close to human looking... ironically it makes even the tiniest inconsistency stand out in glaring detail. Will computer graphics ever overcome that hurdle? I have no idea, though I suspect it will take a lot more than ever improving rendering processes and increased resolutions. For one it would take a far more sophisticated physics engine than I think anyone is using right now, since, if you're going to make something that looks real, it has to behave in a realistic manner, and, all too often, CGI ships have a bad habit of moving around in a very weightless manner. To me, that don't give the presence of mass that you would expect from something so large. Though I imagine that, someday, we will overcome that obstacle.
In the end, though, we all have our prejudices, and it's quite obvious that you will never be satisfied with a CGI model, no matter how realistic or sophisticated it is. That's not meant to sound insulting, it's just that, typically, hearing such a strong viewpoint expressed in the space of one post tells me that. To have a CGI model that moves and acts like a real model would, quite frankly, be a step backward given what's possible with computer generated vessel design, and the limitations of models.
But people have their favored methods of doing things, and that's OK. But I'm not even going to try and think of realistic looking ship designs in an attempt to counter your questions, since you've no doubt already researched the matter and drawn your own conclusions... after all, there aren't THAT many examples of CGI ships that have really made any attempt to look realistic, and everyone here probably knows them all, already... lol
Same with Voyager in the later years of the series and the NX-01 in Enterprise.
