Can graphics keep evolving? How? For how long?

[HoloDust]

curl-6 said:

Pemalite said:

You know, even though I was a PC gamer at that time and had full GLIDE powered 3dfx voodoo graphics, so I was on the bleeding edge of graphics technology... The Nintendo 64 still "wowed" me with it's full filtered texture maps and impressive visuals, I just didn't expect it from a console, I expected something with janky visuals like the PS1/Saturn. (By Janky I mean warping textures, low filtering, heavy use of 2D)

I'm glad Nintendo opted to be it's own thing that generation... Because it did bring us some of the best games of that generation by a country mile, even if it lacked in terms of quantity.

Yeah the N64 may have underperformed commercially relative to both its predecessor and its main rival, but damn if games like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Banjo Kazooie, Starfox 64, etc weren't insanely impressive by the standards of the time regardless.

Basically zero load times, stable textures and polygons, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, analogue input... truly a beast of a system.

All very impressive looking games, but there was a price to be paid in frame rate - OoT ran at 20fps, Starfox 64 ran at 20 (or even lower, not sure), Mario and Banjo ran at (mostly) 30fps. Though, to be honest, I don't remember much fuss about that, frame rate craze came much later.