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Comment by failuser | Hacker News Reader

Now look at real 1990s/early 2000’s screenshots. You memory is deceiving you.

This screenshot is far from current AAA games, but there is no way to render such a scene in a game made for 2000 hardware.

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It looks about on brand with the static renders used in a lot of Final Fantasy games of the PS1 era, albeit with higher pixel density of course, so I can see the resemblance. That said, this is definitely doing it in engine, so while I can see how the GP's memory palace built that memory, you're definitely accurate that no game from that era was doing graphics like this in-engine.

Half life 2 had better looking cityscapes, so early 2000s is accurate.

Half Life 2: Lost coast from 2005 might be a fair comparison for this droll hypothetical

https://youtu.be/j-Iykz0gb7Q (video uploaded 2006)

Pre-rendered their were. Vaguely reminds me of Myst or FF7 quality.

Pre-rendered? Sure. In-game? No. I think the art direction is half of the problem here. You can place lighting much better and the textures are lacking.

there is no "art direction" by Meta or the people working on this project; this is a reference scene for PBR pipelines.

https://developer.nvidia.com/orca/amazon-lumberyard-bistro

You are right, the lighting makes the original scene look worse.

For those reading who may not remember or have played the original FF7, here are links to pre-rendered backgrounds in FF7:

https://www.jmeiners.com/pre-rendered-backgrounds/img/ff7.jp...

and the image in the article about Meta's library:

https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/blogs/2023-july-blog-...

Not apples-to-apples because FF7 was NTSC resolution and heavily compressed.

If FF7 were rendered at the same resolution, I think it would be comparable. Here's an FF7 AI upscale mod for reference:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-full-high-res-ai-upscale-...

Unreal and Quake engines handled light and textures far better than that.

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