To follow on from what I wrote above, maybe we won’t really get more realistic and easily played sampler-based instruments until samples are more micro-adjustable depending upon meta-parameters.
Imagine a sample instrument consisting of a whole lot of very short impulses (from each stage of several notes), which, according to a couple of meta-parameters, are dynamically selected and morphed (in time and timbre) between.
Just maybe these huge multi-GB sample libraries, sampling complete notes, could be substantially reduced, at the expense of increased CPU, to just a few MB, while being a whole lot more versatile!