Amazing detail in computer sprites

[Pawnless Endgame]

I remember being on a BBC radio show back in 2006 where I was on the panel giving my views on World of Warcraft, as Warcraft was big business back then. Others on the panel were comparing it to Second Life. Anyway, how did the sprites in Second Life become so detailed?! I came across this gallery on Flickr - male and female sprites. If you download or view any of them in full res, they will show up as 3,772px × 3,533px which is higher than 1080p or 4k. While keeping it "tooney" like Warcraft and Sims 4, the detail in these Second Life sprites are higher than anything I've seen in a computer game so far. How they're doing it? They're somehow rendering the images to be higher than standard monitor resolutions. Are they buying the base game and then doing some serious modding to it?

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

This is the computer games section of OcUK, so I don't know why this topic has confused people. Is computer sprite the wrong word to use nowadays? Second Life is a very old game (2006/Warcraft-era) and all I was asking was how did they get the sprites as detailed as the ones in the Flickr gallery? They're not meant to be photographic, just compared a lot more favourable than Warcraft and Sims 4 sprites.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Haha ok guys. I didn't realise that sprites were 2D-only. Yeah I remember the classic Space Invaders, Galaxian etc

It must had been 3D models / avatars what I was asking about, and their level of detail without it needing to be photo-realistic

The timing of this thread btw is because I just acquired a laptop with a GTX 1660 Ti. It is a desktop card and has a passmark of 11592, and an i7-9750H to go with it (passmark=13596). It eats the Sims 4 on ultra settings for breakfast, so I was hoping to utilise the hardware.