The Evolution Of Real Time PC Graphics

Its a bit long for me to watch the whole thing, but I did enjoy skipping around. Some stuff I hadn't seen before, like catzilla.

Also, it really should be called "The Evolution Of Real Time PC Graphics in the last Decade" since it doesn't go back further. I'd expect things like wing commander, wolfenstein and doom 1 to be in there for it to be complete. Especially since during the last decade consoles held back PC game development, so going back further would show far more of a contrast.
 
Definitely fun to watch. I enjoyed seeing in early 2001 or 2002 a fairly-well lit single tree that you could zoom in/out, adjust the gamma a bit and a few slider bars that had little foilage and looked a bit ...fake. It's amazing to see how far we've come when you consider that the later 2013 Hitman Absolution demo featured/started with a tree that looked far more realistic and then zooms out to show 100+ people, fireworks, many trees, walls and objects vs the '1' object we could semi-accurately display in 2001.
 
Someone want to be super awesome and earn some internet dollars by simply listing some of the best parts of the video and at what time they occurred? :)
 
Someone want to be super awesome and earn some internet dollars by simply listing some of the best parts of the video and at what time they occurred? :)

Now that would be some demonstrated [H]ardCyberloafing.
 
The physics on the buildings was absolutely terrible in catzilla, uniform pieces..really?
 
I remember when that 3dMark03 Space Marine demo came out. It brought my machine to its knees. I think i was running like a TI4600 at the time.
 
Someone want to be super awesome and earn some internet dollars by simply listing some of the best parts of the video and at what time they occurred? :)

Load the Youtube page. The description has timestamps for the various games/demos used. Sure, it's not condensed to the best parts, but that's subjective anyways.
 
Ain't nobody got time for dat!

I watched a bit and skipped a bit. We've come a long way in the past decade, but I'd like to see early 90's (late 80's, maybe) up to today.
 
I was really unimpressed with Catzilla. Everything about it is kind of subpar for a 2012ish demo. Also seems like nothing in PhysX ever really impresses me enough to get a card for PhysX.
 
I'm still not impressed with facial details and vegetation/trees we have today.
 
Ain't nobody got time for dat!

I watched a bit and skipped a bit. We've come a long way in the past decade, but I'd like to see early 90's (late 80's, maybe) up to today.

The first commercially available graphics card was the 3Dfx Voodoo, and that was 1994. Nvidia had a commercial product in 1995 with the NV1, but wasn't until the Riva cards that we saw them really become competitive, which was 1998.

So the timeline in the video is pretty good start. To go back further you'd need to explore 3Dfx, and I don't remember them making tech demos. Best way demo a 3Dfx card was to download GLquake.exe. That alone made people go out and buy a graphics card.

The early demos look better then most games you can get today. Then again, that's because the demos aren't games. Just a 3D model running around with full effects turned on. Compared to a world.
 
Load the Youtube page. The description has timestamps for the various games/demos used. Sure, it's not condensed to the best parts, but that's subjective anyways.

Ahhh this works thanks! Two internet dollars for the referral


Catzilla one was decent, except for the music... bleh-step
 
The first commercially available graphics card was the 3Dfx Voodoo, and that was 1994. Nvidia had a commercial product in 1995 with the NV1, but wasn't until the Riva cards that we saw them really become competitive, which was 1998.

So the timeline in the video is pretty good start. To go back further you'd need to explore 3Dfx, and I don't remember them making tech demos. Best way demo a 3Dfx card was to download GLquake.exe. That alone made people go out and buy a graphics card.

The early demos look better then most games you can get today. Then again, that's because the demos aren't games. Just a 3D model running around with full effects turned on. Compared to a world.

Both the voodoo1/Monster cards came with 3? demo's, think one was actually a full fledged Q2 exe, which all you had to do was connect to a server which supporter file transfers, give it an hour or two and you had every file/texture you would ever need to play the full game. I did that a few times until I bought it for $10 used. :D

The Voodoo2's I remember came with some game demo's too, still very basic modeling for today's standards. The ones that 3dfx released after did have demo's but I don't remember them being anything crazy, the TNT2 did have a demo that was pretty awesome but I can't remember what it was now.

I remember playing some of the ATI demo's, the crypt (which I think was for the Maxx) and the egyption one which was for the RAGE 3D line of cards they had to compete with the TNT's.

I was thrilled to load up The Grove back in the day, I was shocked at the lighting it had (lack of real shadows :p) and then when I got my Ti4600 I was increadibly let down by that stupid wearwolf. They did start doing better with the 5900 tech demo's then hit one out of the park with the Luna/Mermaid one and that hair.
 
I'm still not impressed with facial details and vegetation/trees we have today.
Getting faces/skin right is solvable in rasterization, but foliage — not so much. Even when you take the lowest overdraw approach, you still have to draw a lot of surfaces to create dense foliage, and that's something only Moore's law can address.

A couple more turns on the crank and we'll have 'good enough' vegetation. There'll still be pop-in, but things will get denser and lusher, and draw distance will go up.
 
Does anyone remember the name of the tech in the original Unreal where if you went up really close to a wall it would be very detailed and not washed out (at least with glide not sure if it worked for software opengl or d3d)? It was a big deal, along with the rest of that engine..amazing at the time, especially the software renderer. In games following that the tech was dropped, even to this day, and i always wondered why considering the increase in texture memory.
 
The first commercially available graphics card was the 3Dfx Voodoo, and that was 1994. Nvidia had a commercial product in 1995 with the NV1, but wasn't until the Riva cards that we saw them really become competitive, which was 1998.

So the timeline in the video is pretty good start. To go back further you'd need to explore 3Dfx, and I don't remember them making tech demos. Best way demo a 3Dfx card was to download GLquake.exe. That alone made people go out and buy a graphics card.

The early demos look better then most games you can get today. Then again, that's because the demos aren't games. Just a 3D model running around with full effects turned on. Compared to a world.

What about the old "3D-Decelerators"? S3 Virge series, Trident, Matrox Mystique, etc? Or was that all after Voodoo1? Cant remember.
 
What about the old "3D-Decelerators"? S3 Virge series, Trident, Matrox Mystique, etc? Or was that all after Voodoo1? Cant remember.

I believe some of those did including rendition, beat voodoo 1 for the home market. What makes people forget about the others is voodoo 1 was heads and tails above the others in performance/price category. Even the voodoo 2 was great compared to the others, when it was launched, until the tnt 1. Which even then it sitll had raw power which pretty much lead it to be unbeatable at 800x600 and 1024x768 vs tnt1. I remember in a Next Generation magazin article (i think it was NG) when talking about the Home luanch of the v1, 3dfx said they had ~10% more power than the n64.
 
Does anyone remember the name of the tech in the original Unreal where if you went up really close to a wall it would be very detailed and not washed out (at least with glide not sure if it worked for software opengl or d3d)? It was a big deal, along with the rest of that engine..amazing at the time, especially the software renderer. In games following that the tech was dropped, even to this day, and i always wondered why considering the increase in texture memory.

Are you thinking of S3's Metal api? or their S3TC

I think the Savage 4 and 2000 chips supported that ( Diamond Stealth S540 and Viper 2 cards)
 
Back
Top