What game made you think graphics could never get any better

>>2898496
That screenshot is suppose to have reflections on the floor, whats wrong with your version?

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This game just blew my mind on so many levels. Nothing else I can think of really made such an impressive leap except perhaps Doom 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBeGAhk79I

>>2898526

Soul Calibur looked way better for a launch title surely

>>2898537
I'm talking about the arcade

>>2898537
I assume he means the model 3's arcade version, not the dreamcast port.

>>2898547

This. The game looked so damn amazing

1. Doom 1
2. Mario 64
3. Unreal
4. House of the Dead 2 on Dreamcast
5. Giants: Citizen Kabuto
6. Doom 3

Nothing since then

>>2898585

Is that the AVGN dude?

>>2898585
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Were you guys really that impressionable? I don't remember going "wow" over any game in a technical level, not even with that early 3D PSX demo of the dinosaur.

>>2898524
It seems he is not using the Glide API.

>>2898547
DOA on Dreamcast was also impressive. I knew one shop who had this videowall running DOA on Dreamcast. It was glorious.

>>2898947
Kids are impressionable as fuck, if you didn't shit your pants at how complex games were getting as a kid, I feel sorry for you man.

>>2898496
When I first saw this my jaw dropped.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NjYWVia5bAM

I thought Majora's Mask was pretty great looking. Then again it came out pretty late in the N64's lifespan, a lot of games coming out around that time on N64 and PSX looked pretty good.

>>2898496
You just posted it OP. When I saw the game for the first time my jaw dropped.

>>2898585
I played this game like a year ago for the first time. I honestly thought it was pretty interesting, but it's a shame that the story goes to shit later in the game.

games that incorporate real life imagery are fucking fascinating and have interesting atmosphere because of it. Harvester, for example.

>>2898951
I don't know man, to me games were either good looking or not, and that was more related to the art direction than actual tech. I kinda got surprised with DKC but not with Starfox or Virtua Racing.

>>2898496
May be typical as it gets, but my mom remembered that I "loved that Zelda game on the game boy" and bought me OOT with an N64 that xmas. I really hadn't seen any 3D gaming at that point, so this gets me everytime:

https://youtu.be/CtMllWsML5M

>>2898964
Also, a gay character that isn't "HUUU I'M GAY LOOK AT ME"

>>2898547
Well, since you mentioned 6th gen...

There was an early article in EGM about the Xbox, and they showed pictures of a tech demo of some dancing girl, and I think there was a giant mech involved too. That was the first time I thought, "wow, this looks amazing."

No retro game ever really wowed me, graphics wise. Although I will say that the FMVs in FFIX look really damn good, considering it's a PS1 game.

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>>2898496
I hated 3D graphics for a long time, and thought they were way uglier than 2D. Ecco Defender of the Future was the first game where I thought the 3D was finally good enough to be really aesthetically pleasing.

I'm still waiting for them to get to the point there they can't get better though.

>>2898951
Eh. I got a Saturn and Sonic R when I was like 5, so there was hardly a time in my life when 3D gaming wasn't normal. And all of the improvements to graphics were pretty incremental after that. The few times I was surprised by graphics, it was on non-retro hardware.

>>2898947
I'm sorry you have no sense of wonder.

As for me, it was FFX's water rendering during the cutscenes. I just remember sitting there, shocked, my high school brain incabable of understanding that that wasn't a photograph.

Virtual Fighter blew my mind when I first saw it at a store kiosk as a kid. I thought they looked just like real people kek.

First time playing playing SA1 on the DC demo disc that came with the system was also a holy shit this is tits moment. The colors, speed, and Fuck me is that a whale chasing sonic?!

>>2899153
>I'm sorry you have no sense of wonder.
You shouldn't be. He has a sense of wonder. The other people didn't. Thinking 'this is as good as it gets' is the opposite of a sense of wonder. Realizing that it's not better than even life like realizes that there's improvements that can be made and gives a sense of wonder about how technology will improve and how great it can really get.

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I don't think any games had such sharp, organic environments like Crash Bandicoot for years to come, except for its direct sequel, which was even more stunning.

Back then, most, if not all 3D games were stuck with 45 degree angles all over the place, even for the aforementioned organic environments, which Crash did so wonderfully.

Facial animations too, as well as flexible joints on all characters, make it a real good package for mid-1996, and for the rest of time as far as the PS1 hardware is concerned.

Until we achieve something like the fully interactive and life-like Holodecks from Star Trek, I feel graphics can always get better.

>>2898496
What were Unreal's big draws in terms of graphics? I wasn't a PC gamer at the time, so I was out of the loop.

>>2899414
Well, though saying "I'm sorry you have no sense of wonder" was not a valid retort, neither was the original guy's anal prancing around with "Were you guys really that impressionable?". So my sympathies lie with the second guy, though he should learn to spot a nonsensical post and not respond to it.

>>2898524
Didn't have reflections until Gold I thought... Could be wrong though.

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And I was right.

>>2898547
>DOA3

That, Ninja Gaiden, and Riddick are still great looking today.

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Max Payne, I religiously-followed 3DR's site for updates because it was basically HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE MATRIX made playable, pic related is one of my oldest screenshots ever, where I managed to make it just barely work on my Voodoo 3, and even then, it was still crazy

SSX still holds up today.

>>2900084

Hard to beat ray tracing.

>>2900084
Those ugly clouds though.

>>2898547
this but for smash bros melee. Shows how young I am I suppose. That game still impresses me though.

For retro nothing really stands out because I was just sort of used to how games looked in the 90s so things couldn't surprise me. I grew up playing Mario World, Sonic 3, and Mario 64, so none of the jumps in that period really amazed me.

>>2898975
I feel the same way about the ending of Mario 64. It remains to me one of the best ways to do an ending, to show you all the places you've been on this incredible journey.

>>2899705
Well, look at what was out around that time. Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996, and was somewhat impressive at the time for having real 3D environments to run around in. Quake came out in 96, and was slightly more impressive, since it added in rocket-jumping, but graphically it wasn't FAR greater than Duke. Quake 2 was a bit more impressive, having things like skyboxes. It was only 97 when that came out. Now, take a good look at a screenshot of Quake 2, and a screenshot of Unreal. Or even better, a screenshot of Unreal using Glide. It looks like the difference between Wolfenstein3D and Duke Nukem 3D.

The first game I was introduced to that was "fully" 3D was Descent and that blew me away.
Even as a kid I didn't think that graphics would just stop improving, though. Rather, I overestimated graphical progress so much that I was typically disappointed most of the time.

>>2898496
>What game made you think graphics could never get any better
none because i'm not a retard thankfully :^)

>>2899128
>I'm still waiting for them to get to the point there they can't get better though.
I fear when they'll get to this point, they'll be developed for years, or, let's say, for a decade.

Probably F.E.A.R. and Half Life 2. Those games still look fucking great 11 respectively 12 years later.

>Moore's Law is coming to an end
>There will never again be as great a graphical leap as there was from 5th to the 6th generation of consoles
Hold me, /vr/

>>2898496
UT99 was jawbreaking for me. Graphics were beautiful.

>>2900272
>It looks like the difference between Wolfenstein3D and Duke Nukem 3D.
No it doesn't. Also Q2's water looks better and the textures animate properly as well rendering smoother. Both are high resolution, though shit for UI scaling. Unreal had mirror effect which was nice but other than that it really only had slightly higher quality textures and models. Albeit Quake 2 is also at a disadvantage aesthetically for being mostly contained indoors. It could do outdoor stuff but mostly it was avoided. The jump between them graphically is fairly minor, nothing like between wolf3d's square ass rooms with little decoration at 320x200 to Duke's fullscale levels full of little touches, verticality, decals, moving shit, per sector lighting that also affected weapons etc... and even at 1024x768 or higher.

>>2901132
No it's not. Moore's law states transistor density doubles every two years, that's it. Still actually does. It doesn't say shit about performance if that's what your getting at and if it were you're like ten years late on that train.
Also, yeah there probably will be another graphical leap that will shit all all over that. It depends on the tech, hitting a performance wall with current techniques and hardware doesn't stop people from using better newer techniques, optimizing, and making new hardware.

>>2901151
Doesn't help when everything is held back by cost. Notice how the latest generation of consoles didn't go for bleeding edge tech this time. It's only going to get worse.

3D: Quake. When I saw it, I thought it was the most realistic thing ever, except for the weapons which looked worse than Doom's.

2D: Metal Slug. "good" doesn't always mean "realistic", and not a lot of 2D games can top its animation.

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Playing FF8's demo and summoning Quetzacoatl was mindblowing after playing FF7, i was also amazed at how the characters looked like actual humans instead of weird blocky messes.

Going from UT99 to UT2003 was also spectacular in terms of graphics, CTF-Citadel lighting and round surfaces was impressive.

>>2901157
That's a wholly different issue and one with entirely different problems and fixes relating to economics. The concept of cost may very well in the not soon but nearer than far future be irrelevant. Since out economic system is basically going to end up hitting a brick wall, assuming we even have one left when the fall out from the employment exodus starts to kick in hard.

>>2898496
To be honest I thought sprites would never completely fade out and that 3D would always look very basic. I remember seeing gameplay footage for not retro GTA3 and nearly shitting my pants because it looked so real.

>>2901151
>Still actually does
Implying

> For example, the 2010 update to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, predicted that growth would slow around 2013,[18] and Gordon Moore in 2015 foresaw that the rate of progress would reach saturation: "I see Moore’s law dying here in the next decade or so."[19]

>Intel confirmed in 2015 that the pace of advancement has slowed, starting at the 22 nm node around 2012, and continuing at 14 nm. Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, announced that "our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two.” This is scheduled to hold through the 10 nm node in late 2017.[20] He cited Moore's 1975 revision as a precedent for the current deceleration, which results from technical challenges and is “a natural part of the history of Moore's law.”[21][22][23]

>>2898526

Seeing a VF3 Cabinet right next to a Tekken 2 cabinet back in the day was pretty damn mindblowing.

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I don't know about getting better but I remember there being lots of talk about graphics innovations when Supreme Snowboarding was released.

Hm. I mean, graphics are a tricky thing. Like, seeing really well-detailed sprites and backgrounds in a 2D game can be just as mind blowing as a lovely 3D game.

I honestly can't say the exact times when I saw games that blew my mind, though I remember the feeling happening a lot during the fifth/sixth gen. A technical aspect that really blew my mind was the water physics and reactions in Super Mario Sunshine. I just thought "welp, water can't get any better than this". It kinda didn't, but whatever.

I also think, in terms of art style, the Wind Waker and similar games that focused on simplistic visuals with technical polish were so much fun to look at and the first time I saw any of them I was instantly impressed.

>>2901231
>Water physics
I've always been facinated by different physics in games. Water has always been a let down for me in most games because of it always seeming to have an "invisible container" effect, and I've yet to see real good gas physics.

mount&blade

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>>2901146
You honestly want to tell me that the difference between the left screen and the right is "fairly minor"? Take a goddamn good look at that ground and say Unreal only had "slightly higher quality textures".

Unreal blew people away graphically, AFTER Quake 2 had already been released and was out for a while. It was considered a massive leap forward in graphics. You honestly think people would have thought that if the difference was "fairly minor"?

Abe's Exoddus.
Granted, I had no idea that polygons and sprites are a thing.

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Need for Speed: Porsche Challenge

>>2901256
This. Unreal was mind blowing on release and still holds up to this day. Not that q2 wasn't great but unreal took serious advantage of the hardware at the time.

>>2901256
Not that guy but I question the fairness of that comparison. Didn't Quake 2 have 3dfx Glide support for the most of its popularity rather than the software rendering in that pic? I'm not sure though

But yeah regardless I remember Unreal being notable for its incredible textures and eyecandy like reflections and cutting-edge lighting effects rather than the polycount itself. I also remember it aging pretty quickly and being blown away by id tech 3 graphically

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>>2901267

Anon...

>>2901256
unreal definitely looks better than quake 2 but you're using a software render of q2 there rather than the open gl/3dfx version

Morrowind

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>>2901256

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>>2901303
Adding soundtrack to complete the experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXBcPUm83KI

It didn't blow me away like some other titles did, but I remember being pretty impressed by SoulCalibur the first time I saw it in person. Everything was just so smooth and polished and the backgrounds looked phenomenal. That experience really got me hyped for whatever the rest of the sixth gen would bring.

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>>2901303
Now in tiny gif form.

>>2901469
Why? The small ass gif takes up more bandwidth than the webm

>>2901483
For using as an avatar on forums.

Earthworm Jim. Back then I thought going full cartoon was the way to go for video games. Well shit, I was wrong but it was still pretty impressing.

Battle Arena Toshinden: The whole reason why I got a PSX. Since then, nothing really blew me away that much. The jump from 2D to 3D was the last real revolution. Sure, if you compare it to games today, the gap is just as big as between a SNES game and early 3D, but it was all a slow evolution since then.

>>2901483

Tiny things can be cute. Just roll with it.

>>2901469
>filename

>>2901524
I stole it from oldunreal.com

>>2901529
I actually visit that site sometimes, so I knew where it came from.

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Metal Slug. Literally the most beatiful 2D game ever made.

>>2898496
None of them, ever. Even once we reach literally near realism (highest end of next gen GPUs playing games with PBR, life-like animation like seen in so many tech demos, etc), we're still going to be behind in VR resolution and fidelity for quite a long time (things will get substantially better pretty much overnight once we have eye tracking in the main headsets though)

>>2901517

I'll go out on a limb and say that based on public reactions to it, VR is the next big leap. Especially in terms of the hardware improvements required for it.

>>2900134
I was shocked at the systems this game ran well on

>>2900134
>I managed to make it just barely work on my Voodoo 3

Are you me?

Did you have issues with the comic style interludes? I did and read it was because the Voodoo 3 only supported 16 bit color

>>2902658
too much bloom

>>2902635
>VR resolution and fidelity
you lost me there

>>2902658
As much as I love Most Wanted 2005, talking about an Xbox 360 launch title is probably pushing it

>>2898496
Unreal sure have come a long way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEZ69WWmh3A

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Man I thought this was the peak when I first saw it.

>>2898496
After Burner 2
Mortal Kombat 2
Final Fantasy 8
Gran Turismo 2

>>2902814

>MK2

I feel you. "HOW YOU CAN GET MORE REAL THAN CONTROLLING REAL PEOPLE ON THE SCREEN???"

>>2902986
0/20

I think I will only be really impressed with VR games

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mostly because of that light through windows in which you saw dust fall

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My nine-year-old mind couldn't comprehend how they got so many ghosts and moving objects into this game without flickering, and how awesome the colours and shading were.

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>>2902629
this
nothing can beat Metal Slug

>>2902629
That thing definitely looks like something out of a 40's cartoon.

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Dont judge. I was 11.

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You have to understand, this was coming out of my fucking television. This would be my glimpse at the modern 3d era.

The only other time I felt this shit in my balls would be at a Babbage's where a computer was setup and playing the menu demo to quake.

The last time I had the really good tingle sensation in my balls was when I finally got Halo: CE and my xbox. The first person to vehicle animations, the textures and tons of other shit.

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>>2901256
misleading comparison, as Quake 2 is running in software renderer there, although it was primarily played using its glide opengl renderer. Also, the mirror effect is very cheap/simple.

>>2898496
No game did that for me. Most of the progression was natural, if you have even casual interest in realtime 3D rendering. The most recent changes with deferred rendering are odd though. Almost feels like going backwards, although it's the reasonable thing to do.
Even in the present practically all games still struggle with one thing or another. Especially skin, water an complex materials, like fur, hair, grass, dirt, etc. are still badly approximated and/or right in the uncanny valley.

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>>2903259
crepuscular rays can be fairly easy to approximate, under some conditions

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>>2901245
If you want cool water visuals (not necessarily physics, unless you mean optics), look at Outcast. What do you mean by gas physics?

>>2901185
Supreme Snowboarding looked pretty impressive for its time. The game somehow managed to do convincing lighting effects that looked like the scene videos of the day, in terms of white point, less flares, etc., with the competition looking far more bland. The night races were also very pretty.

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>>2901135
beautiful? Without a doubt. Especially in comparison to Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament looked so colorful and vibrant. Jawdropping though? Its limits were still quite obvious, in terms of polygon density, texture resolution.

In fact, the extreme colorful looks of Unreal Tournament remind me of Forsaken. An otherwise fairly forgettable Descent clone for beginners, but its weapons were some of the most colorful and varied shit I'd seen ever, and for that alone, that game has a place in my video game memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs8UXvNX8W8

>>2904810
There are simplified models of fluid mechanics suitable for games, but hardly anyone uses them. See Jos Stam's publication from 2003 for example.

>>2904859
so, fluid mechanics. That was my question.
I can imagine a good reason to not use them, is that they hardly provide any gain. Do you have an example at hand, where a game considerably profits from the application of fluid dynamics in any component?

>>2904861
>Do you have an example at hand, where a game considerably profits from the application of fluid dynamics in any component?
Flight simulators and games where water levels are dreadfully boring.

>>2904871
Flight simulators already have a pretty solid aerodynamics model. You mean for gusts of wind or vortex trails or stuff?

As for the dreadfully boring water levels, that's because they're water levels.

>>2904810
Gas, like, hot air filling a balloon, or poison gas filling a room and escaping around windows and such.

I know, it's not the easiest thing to render, but the idea of it being done some day....

>>2905047
both can be done reasonably well without the use of fluid dynamics. Got to keep in mind, fluid dynamics add a huge burden on the processor. Half the job of realtime 3D is avoiding burden, in order to do keep things realtime. So unless you have a really good reason that you need the behavior of the gas to not just look realistic, but be realistic, it's usually not worth that burden.

>>2904665
What the fuck is with you and ball tingling?

>>2904810
I thought trespasser had decent water for its time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJNB1BEiOao

>>2898496
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfMm4mkyTn4

this one

>>2905059
The cool, and at the time unique, thing of Outcasts water is the correct implementation of the Fresnel term. If you look at the water from a low angle, the environment reflects on the surface, you can't see below the surface. If you look at it from a high angle (like, being close, looking down right into it), there's very little reflection remaining, and instead you can see under the surface. On a technical level, that was a pixel shader, before pixel shaders existed. The 3D hardware had fixed pipelines. Outcast used software rendering, so it could do this, and many other pixel shading effects, in software, long before they came to 3D hardware.

Your video seems to mostly be about the correct propagation of waves, which is definition worth a mention and nice contribution to this thread. You can clearly see the rock in the distance below the water surface though, even though you couldn't in reality. That's one of the limits of the no-shader pipeline of the day. You had a texture, and transparency, and that's it.

For me it was renting a Nintendo 64 in early 1998 and playing Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 on it.

I didn't think "this is the pinnacle" or anything, but it was Full THREE- DEE, and it was FUN. (I got older and realized kart wasnt, but hey it was close enough on my shit CRT).

It was a pretty huge leap from the fake-3d outrun-style racers and <5 fps poly titles on my Genesis to this.

We had a family PC already I guess but I didn't have any older brothers or anything to keep me in the loop as to what was happening there.

>>2905062
lots and lots of video. Not exactly the peak of technology. Ever since hardware was strong enough for FMV, that kind of graphics has been standard. It also lead to substantial growth in game size, with very little added value.

>>2905068
>definition worth a mention
Fuck me, meant to say definitely worth a mention.

>>2905068
Funny you mention that, Trespasser actually has a software renderer and that was the initial focus before they changed their minds. Some more info about it here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131746/postmortem_dreamworks_.php?page=3

>>2905103
Today I learnt, thanks

>>2905179
most posters at least try to relate it to retro gaming. Then there's you

>>2901501

>adding 3.32 MB to page weight on EVERY thread you shitpost on

you are literally the reason forums are cancer. I bet you even post with a signature too

>>2905208
unless the image is transmitted with a no-cache header or very short cache expiration date, the image is transfered only once

>>2898620
No, although the douche from this game does dress similarly

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I can think of a few, maybe not 'Graphics can't get any better' but at least feeling like 'How are they going to improve on this?'

First I can think of is probably Virtua Fighter. Seeing a full 3D fighting game was phenomenal at the time. I remember lining up to play it at Toys R Us when the Saturn came out. I still think VF2 looks gorgeous today.

Virtua Fighter 3 was another leap in graphics that blew my mind. I remember reading how the sand would dampen and then dry in the sun, how you could see details in the windows in the Sky Scraper stage... it's sucha beautiful game. The Desert Sunset stage was amazing.

In terms of 2D in that era, Marvel Super Heroes, Xmen vs Street Fighter were so impressive. Having to get a 4MB Cart to play them on Saturn further added to their mystique.

Most recently was Splinter Cell on Xbox. That game blew me away, particularly with the lighting.

But the biggest, biggest impact a game ever had is Shenmue. Just the incredible detail, and amazing character models blew me away. My friends who ended up getting PS2s came over and played Shenmue and were still impressed by how good it looked. Not even the pure technical side, but the art direction in those games is wonderful. I think that will forever be my favourite looking game.

>>2900198
Sure, but keep in mind we achieved photo-realism (not, "Öh shit, this looks nice" buzzword, but actually indistigiushible pictures) sometimes in 2010 so even the ray tracing methods improved a lot since the days of Riven/Toy Story.

>>2905798
yea sim late 80s nihogo karate boi op

need reboot from scratch imo. the setting was the game. The story was great but 2ndary to your simulation of late 80s japan

>>2905054
Well yeah, I understand the why of not seeing things like that, I just find it neat when those details are taken into account.