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Comment by tomaskafka | Hacker News Reader

I love it! The great 2026 benchmark is a native Turok (I vividly remember that 30fps low poly iguana looking as real as Jurassic Park in my childhood), Unreal and Q3A.

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I had that with GTA3: seemed photorealistic at the time.

A bunch of PS2 cards had this effect on me. Fifa 2001, Gran Turismo 3, etc.

Gran Turismo 3 still looks photo realistic!

This is especially true on a CRT. People often forget how "good enough" the PS2 graphics were, and how big of a deal that was.

Even the prior two games had an extremely tasteful use of textures and geometry that just felt right and realistic enough to not break immersion despite the hardware limitations. This era of gaming rightfully and correctly recognized that any form of "realism" is ultimately an impression rather than an objective truth.

Gran Turismo 3 was where I first started experiencing the "uncanny valley" of graphics. The game looked and felt incredible... so incredible that the lack of damage felt like an immersion-breaker in a way I hadn't experienced before.

> People often forget how "good enough" the PS2 graphics were, and how big of a deal that was.

I remember going to an electronics store with my friend. I couldn't figure out why they had a broadcast football game playing on a 15 inch LCD display up front. I assumed it was a game but then watched it for a few cuts and was so certain it was live footage...

It was a madden game on PS2 in demo mode.

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