When MILC technology has developed to the point where it can replace some of the clockwork and optical technology of the DSLR without performance detriment it will. When the DSLR no longer needs a mirror it will have become a MILC but with the bigger battery, better ergonomics, etc. of the DSLR.
I'm just not seeing how or why on all levels. OK, I can see a MILC replacing something like a D3300, and in the process losing the viewfinder entirely. But for any kind of prosumer four figure body, these MILCs will need viewfinders and they will have to be really good. No more of this low res 8 bit JPEG preview BS- to get people to leave their D810s and 5DSs they will need that new 4MP Epson viewfinder and full time 14 bit RAW preview at a high frame rate.
Ok, those may be the necessary technological developments.
That's going to take MORE baseline processing power, hogging MORE of the already overtaxed batteries, making the battery life gulf even BIGGER.
Meanwhile more processing power is always getting less power hungry as Moore's Law continues its progress. Plus the current generation of Sony DSLR/SLT batteries is now rather old and low in capacity. It won't be difficult to issue a higher capacity version. Plus it won't be difficult to increase the physical size of the battery. These are not problematic technical hurdles.
The processing power for what would essentially be a sensor & 2 1080p video cards running at a high frame rate will always be a lot higher than zero (the energy consumed by a pentaprism). Not to mention Moore's Law has been slowing down for years, and no matter what computation still requires power.
All this can be circumvented with a bigger battery but then if that battery is so big it makes the MILC just as big and heavy or bigger and heavier than a comparable DSLR what's the point?
Ah! I see what the problem is! We're talking at cross purposes. You're making the assumption that there have been, are, and will be two classes of camera, the big heavy DSLR and the smaller lighter MILC. Speculating about future developments is just speculation. To you the primary advantage of the MILC is being smaller and lighter, so what's the point in a MILC which is as big and heavy as a DSLR?
But there's nothing inherent in either technology which insists on these differences. They just happen to be the current marketing strategies of some of the important manufacturers. So long as MILCs have some performance disadvantages with respect to DSLRs they need to exploit other advantages such as the smaller sizes they make possible. Whenever improving technology erases the performance differences however, as it certainly will one day, then the days of the OVF will be numbered. Some of the MILCs of the future will be as small as possible, just like today's. Some of those future MILCs will offer the bigger batteries extra controls and better ergonomics that some photographers prefer and now find in DSLRs. They'll all however be mirrorless, i.e. MILCs, beause there will no longer be any reason for the mirror.
You can't have image magnification in the viewfinder without EVF. That's a really good way of checking AF accuracy very quickly, and of doing really accurate manual focusing easily and quickly. That alone is a reason I'll never go back to OVF. As you point out, it's just going to take some improved EVF technology to make it a clear winner over OVF.
A good AF system won't engender such insecurity.
That's perfectly true. It just happens to be the case, however, that DSLR-type AF with separate large phase-based AF sensors require very fine optical and mechanical calibration to match the naturally inherent accurcy of image sensor AF. Today's top of the range most expensive cameras with DSLR-type AF have the most sophisticated and most accurate AF of that kind that reasonable money can buy at the moment, but at the same time they also have the most sophisticated methods of manual focusing and the most sophisticated methods of fine tuning the AF by the user on a lens by lens basis. Why? Because the best AF of that kind you can buy today still isn't good enough for the most demanding enthusuasts and professionals.
of course as you point out when shooting a large fierce animal heading towards you a good fast AF system is essential, possibly life saving. That doesn't mean good manual focus aids and good AF checking and fine tuning aids are not required. Quite the contrary, because using them when you have plenty of time to explore how well your AF is doing is how you discover which of your lenses AF accurately and which need a bit of adjustment. They make it possible to do that adjustment and check it more easily. They make it possible for users to develop the confidence in their DSLRs' AF accuracy that is as you point out required for photographing large fierce animals in the wild.
Your hopes and dreams are not a guarantee that the technology is feasible to develop and implement in a realistic way in a camera.
Of course not. But I do have a pretty good idea of how all the various technologies in use today work, and a pretty good idea of how future technologies might work. Now retired, I started doing digital photography machine vision research in 1981.
The lenses are lenses - the GM glass shows MILC pretty much has no advantage there for large sensors.
Nothing to do with MILCs. Everything to do with the lens design and manufacturing technology. I didn't know anyone had yet managed to review one of these recently announced GM lenses with Sony's new optical finishing technology. Can you point me to a review?
I like MILCs but I'm getting really annoyed with these "promises" that MILC will overcome any and all obstacles with no proof or reasoning beyond zealotry. It's tired. Unless you have a link or something showing camera makers are actively working on these issues don't talk about what "will be".
There never will be, just as there are still people shooting film because "digital can never equal the special quality of film". But just as the die-hard film enthusiasts didn't stop most of the camera industry from moving to digital, so the die-hard OVF enthusiasts won't stop most of the camera industry giving up OVF when EVF features surpass it in the eyes of most consumers.
Film vs digital is a terrible analogy for OVF vs EVF, and making such a comparison only demonstrates how deluded and hyperbolic the discussion has become. If EVFs were as revolutionary as digital OVFs would have dissappeared just as quickly as film did.
Of course EVFs aren't nearly as revolutionary as digital cameras, they're just an accessory technology. If we take the development of a 6MP DSLR to be the time when digital cameras roughly equalled 35mm film in performance that was roughly a dozen years after the first consumer digital camera appeared on the market. I think the first EVF on the market arrived with Sony's DKC-ID 1PRO in 1996. In 2011 Sony brought out the Nex 5n, which featured an EVF as an expensive accessory. In 2012 Sony gave up DSLRs and started its SLT line with the A57. Those early EVFs were distinctly inferior to optical viewfinders in image quality, and relied on the extra features they made possible to sell. In 2016 they had still failed to match OVFs in image quality. So it's clearly a slower development, but not as much as twice as slow.
There's no way of proving that the kind of developments I'm suggesting will happen. There's no way of proving that men will ever walk on the surface of Mars. It would however be rather dogmatically conservative to insist that the absence of such proofs amount to improbability. In my opinion
