Fringe/Chromatic Aberration does make things more realistic. It only works though by setting it to a subtle value. Chromatic aberration is an imperfection and imperfections create lifelike visuals. Any 3d artist has seen that chromatic aberration can be the difference between a good piece of work and an organic lifelike piece of work. Sure, the imperfections come from cameras, but are very much seen through your eyes in a subtle way.
The problem is CA/Fringe are done in a poor way. It pulls back the corners of the screen and scales up POORLY when at higher resolutions. The difference between this and an actual rendering software is that CA is done with a soft offset and also pulls color away from even the center of the image.
These effects are meant to break up the mechanical look and feel of an image. My problem is people are too busy saying to stop doing something instead of providing a solution that makes games feel less like a machine of assets.
Don’t get me wrong though. The fringe/CA effect is too much here. The point of using these effects is to give a subtle change in the look. Not to make it obvious that you’re USING such a feature. Same goes with noise.