To bring the Avatar conversation back around to Star Wars, Cameron essentially took what Lucas was doing with AotC and RotS and went a few steps further.
The sony cameras used were only slightly better versions of the same 2/3” ones used for the latter two prequels. The big difference obviously is that for Avatar they were arranged into beamsplitter rigs to shoot in native stereo.
Instead of shooting everything against greenscreen, more than half the movie was MoCap’d without even using actual cameras.
Most significant of all is the digital character work ILM had started with Jar Jar in TPM and Weta had expanded with Gollum and Kong. The animation for the Na’vi came pretty darn close to bridging the uncanny valley, although it probably helped that they weren’t supposed to represent recognizable human characters like Tarkin in Rogue One.
Circa 2011 I remember thinking for sure that when George inevitably went back on his word and made the ST that it would be a native stereo production, probably using RED cameras.
Then the Disney deal happened and they hired JJ to direct. There went any chance it wouldn’t be shot the exact same way as the OT (and JJ’s other movies).
But by that point the post-conversion tech had actually gotten pretty good and had become more about the extra surcharge anyway, so by the time Episode VII was actually made it didn’t matter one way or the other how it was shot.