Yes, pretty much - once you have worlds that are represented via volumetric "grid" of "space" (whatever that grid is, be it tiny voxels or something else), and every coordinate in space has its properties and interacts with other points in space via set of physical laws, you get to the point of game development where putting a wooden door somewhere, is like putting a wooden door in our world - door will react in the similar way it reacts reacts IRL, and getting it hacked by an axe is not a matter of developer making a code for it, but the door reacting to physical laws of that world. I think this (along with AI agents) will change how a lot of games are designed at the fundamental level.

I'm always impressed with each generation. I don't see that changing. I think console gamers are underestimating the room for improvement.

Having said that games, even low end, look great.

The most impressive jump for me was GameCube. Specifically the battle of Endor. Not only did it look great but the sheer number of ships on the screen was impressively.

The possibilities of such an approach are mind-boggling, but then so is the processing power necessary to pull it off.

Then again, folks probably said the same thing about 3D graphics in the 70s.

Yeah Rogue Squadron II was one of the biggest wow moments for me in all my time as a gamer. To my N64 owner's eyes, seeing it in action for the first time felt like playing movie CGI in realtime, at 60fps to boot.

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.

Starfox 64 was 30fps I believe, it was the SNES original that was 15fps or so.

Regardless, it was pretty commonplace for 5th gen titles to run at like 20fps; it wasn't til the arrival of more powerful hardware in the 6th gen that higher and more stable framerates in 3D games became standard.

Hm, you might be right, I remember slow downs, but maybe my memory on it is not as good.

PS1 had had quite a few 60fps games, but I'd take OoT's 20fps over PS1's polygon wobbliness anytime.

Yeah our memories tend to smooth things out; as a kid I never noticed the lagging framerates in many of my favourite games.

There were some 60fps games in the 5th gen (F-Zero X for instance) but 30fps and below (often well below) were the norm as the hardware was just barely strong enough to handle 3D graphics.

At the time though, seeing fully three dimensional worlds was mind-blowing. The first time I fired up my N64, as a SNES owner, my jaw was on the floor. It's hard to explain to those who grew up later just how much of a quantum leap it was.

I find interesting that you guys talk about being impressed with 5th gen consoles

When I played them as a kid my first thought was I couldn't sometimes even understand what I was looking at and definitely knew games needed to look better lol. One of the reasons why I often choose 2D games over 3D games was my difficulty to process all those formless polygons which were often important doors and items

I had the same impression during 6th gen, although to a much lesser extent. When I played Final Fantasy X (a game with very good graphics by its time) I couldn't help but think "How long it will take to games look as good as the animated cutscenes?"


The first time in my life I felt "ok games now look good" was 8th gen. 7th gen had some realistic games, but colour pallet and artstyle used to be dreadful shades of gray and sepia, there are exceptions though


For me 8th and 9th gen graphics are enough. We hit a point where technology allow artists to manifest nicely their creative side and develop complex and beautiful world universes. Colour are back in games, no more boring grey and brown, and characters models are sufficient to display emotions which is essential to more narrative-driven games

The models and background are "realistic enough" for me to instantly understand everything on screen, so even an ugly game like PUBG is definitely playable to an extent I will not suffer from bad/confusing graphics