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Comment by spywaregorilla | Hacker News Reader

Gotta love the graphics card one.

Graphics Meltdown. That's right, now we have some textures.

That's one thing I miss about that era. Every year your mind would be blown as the seemingly impossible was rendered in real time on your computer. Each year was a massive leap in capabilities.

These days there's still a lot of boundaries being broken but it feels less pronounced than it did in the 80s and 90s. The difference between HD and 4k is pretty small from a reasonable viewing distance vs the difference from SD to HD. Never mind the jump from 8 bit colour pallets to 16 bit colours, CGA to VGA, or even the first time I hooked up a colour monitor to my Amstrad after using a literal green screen for years.

As a kid I went from NES to N64, not knowing there was a generation in between. That was pretty cool. I think there have still been a handful of "wow" moments in graphics for me still in recent years. It's not so much things looking more detailed, but things looking more alive and fluid. Hair is looking really cool in games these days. Wet things look really wet. Real time global illumination strategies look damn cool, and imo, more impressive in non realistic environments. But I think in general the biggest improvements in graphical immersion yet to come will be less in terms of graphical improvements and more in environmental physics and small details that "happen" when previously they would not have happened.

A lot of high end tech is becoming more accessible, and I think because of this, will also become more modular. I'm excited for it.

> I think there have still been a handful of "wow" moments in graphics for me still in recent years.

I'm not saying it isn't happening. I just think it's less dramatic. The examples you've given are all significant in adding to the realism of a game but it still doesn't have the same impact that previous leaps in tech did. eg no kid chats to his mates in the playground about how much more real someone hair looks in a game.

To be totally honest I struggle to tell the difference graphically between PS3, PS4 and PS5 games as an example. I'm an older gamer and I tend to play retro games so I know I'm showing my ignorance here. But to me graphical advancements have been in the "diminishing returns" phase for a good while.

You probably wouldn't say that if you actually looked at a PS3 game vs. a PS5 game. The difference in texture qualities tend to be immense. Older games will have textures that looks like starchy blobs of the right color scheme. Newer games will have detailed textures that have depth to them.

Here's resident evil 6 on the PS3. Look at the roofs and floors, and what the monster skin looks like. Lighting is very glowy and has that heavy bloom effect that was popular at the time. https://www.savegamedownload.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/...

Here's resident evil 8 (I think on Xbox?). Even on the other end of the room you can see details in the wood paneling. The lighting feels more realistic. The reflections off of the floor varying by material and angle are particularly nice looking. The chandelier looks very intricate whereas in an older game it probably would have been comprised of 2D slices or something.

https://i0.wp.com/techstomper.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05...

Are these things you notice once you get playing the game? Eh... probably not.

You're right, I agree with that. I think if I were to look at games side by side I'd notice the difference. I guess I more mean when playing a game, I rarely notice the added fidelity. Where as older generations, like Saturn -> Dreamcast or PS1 -> PS2 the jump was plain as day.

> Every year your mind would be blown as the seemingly impossible was rendered in real time on your computer. Each year was a massive leap in capabilities.

I remember seeing a blurb in a magazine for Morrowind (two years before it came out) with a picture of a dark elf's face and thinking that there was no way I would ever own a computer capable of rendering that.

It’s possible you grew up. I literally couldn’t tell you a difference between the last two generations of PlayStation and Xbox except that one is made by Sony and one is made by Microsoft, but both consoles have their fan communities.

> It’s possible you grew up.

It's not an age thing. It's about graphical updates becoming an advancement with diminishing returns given we only have a limited visual acuity to begin with.

This is why engines have to work on smarter lighting effects, more realistic physics of water, hair, etc to step things up (or pivot to entirely new technology platforms like VR or AR). But the thing with more realistic physics is that they're not always really obvious. That's in part because there's a law of diminishing returns there too where previous generations of game engines would get progressively better at simulating these effects. So unless you're really looking out for the differences, a lot of the improvements will be easily overlooked (though I'm sure they're at least picked up at an unconscious level).

But when you go from monochrome to 4 colours. Or 4 to 16 colours to 256 or several million, that difference is very noticeable because the limitations were very noticeable too. And those were the changes that happened to gaming during the 80s and 90s.

> I literally couldn’t tell you a difference between the last two generations of PlayStation and Xbox

Exactly.

> but both consoles have their fan communities.

Of course they do. You'll find fan bases around most things. That doesn't prove anything other than humans being largely pack animals and habitual.

There were not any differences between the rival consoles. They're just slightly different computers.

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