Theory: History of matte painting

I found couple links about matte painting that explains the history of matte painting very well:


Old ILM matte painting movie..not sure where it's from from Ronn Brown on Vimeo.

Here is also a link that goes through the history of matte painting .

The Future of matte painting
It seems like in the future, matte painting is going more and more in to making stuff in a 3d programs like Vue,Terragen or City Engine. The workflow would be more about generating something in a procedural engine than actual painting or composing cards.