Evolution of Graphics

Graphics Evolution is an arcade platform game that shows you how the gameplay will evolve as you play. And it will evolve as follows. The game starts in its simplest form. There is one block in front of the player, which must be overcome and get to the door. On the second level, there will be more platformer blocks and they will be located on different levels... Then, obstacles and traps will appear, for example, in the form of sharp thorns, into which you cannot fall. So, step by step, you will notice that the graphics, scenery and gameplay will change.

With each level, it becomes more difficult to overcome obstacles. There are 20 levels in the Evolution of Graphics game, which can be passed by reaching the secret door at the end. In terms of controls, the game is pretty simple, you only need a mouse. And in terms of passing it is quite difficult. Some blocks are too small - one wrong move will send you straight onto sharp spikes. Show dexterity and accuracy to successfully complete each level.

Nature as a model

Gamers usually notice major improvements in 3D graphics every two or three years. When Microsoft is tying a new version of DirectX to Windows, or when AMD / Nvidia announces cool new GPU features (if developers find them equally interesting, of course), new effects can be expected over time.

Iconic games such as Morrowind, Doom 3 and Far Cry are renowned for their iconic water reflections, stunning lighting effects and the authentic world of the island. The most significant breakthrough is the development of pixel shaders, which today provide water wave motion, lighting effects on surfaces, and cinematic effects such as motion blur. Today's most advanced effects are provided with DirectX 10.1 and Shader 4; DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5 have also been announced, and should bring the next level of realism to games.

High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDR-R) is responsible for vivid lighting effects; artificial 3D light sources that create lifelike reflections on surfaces; as well as glare and glare when looking directly into the sun. Shader Model 3 graphics card users were amazed at Oblivion's glittering silver swords and sun-drenched white stone temples. HDR-R with DirectX 10 now allows for long beams of light seen in Crysis or Stalker: Clear Sky; they cut through branches and leaves and create a wonderful play of shadows.

Hollywood began to exploit this potential much earlier, often using special cameras that better capture the intensity of light in order to get closer to the perception of the human eyes and brain. On the following pages, we will provide many visual comparisons between 3D graphics and natural effects, all of which will help us to visually demonstrate the development and current state of PC gaming.

The article is divided into two parts. In the first, we will discuss the development of games and characters, and also pay attention to an overview of modern lighting and depth effects of surfaces. Second part concentrates on the elements of fire and water, in it we will compare Hollywood monsters and special effects, talk about physics, and also make some predictions for the future.

Evolution of games

Real Time Strategy (RTS) has gone through impressive development. The graphics have undoubtedly progressed the most, although the controls have also improved steadily. But in last years ideas and opportunities are marking time, giving many gamers the impression that it used to be better.

Warcraft swept the world victoriously in 1994. I used simple graphics with one angle of view, to which were added fixed painted shadows, and the objects looked plastic. In the sequel, released in 1995, the graphics were slightly improved, but the most significant change was the increase in resolution, which made the pixels less visible. This was a necessary step forward, in particular, in terms of the readability of the text. Real 3D graphics were not yet in use. She first appeared in the third part of the series, which was released in 2002 - you immediately notice that the environment and the characters, as if, fell into a box of paints. Everything was overly colored and saturated, and every effect was visually demonstrated. The magic and special abilities were accompanied by lighting effects, the game shone and glowed everywhere.

Further advances in real-time strategy have reduced the vibrant colors a bit, increased the level of detail of objects and, in general, led to a more natural look. It became possible to distinguish individual characters by their uniforms, you can zoom in and out of the camera, and the number of troops has increased significantly. However, this required a powerful CPU. The distribution of characters on the map, the calculation of artificial intelligence and the management of an increasing number of individual units required a considerable amount of computing resources. And modern video cards must provide enough resources to render shader effects with an acceptable speed. Modern games like World in Conflict put more emphasis on lighting effects, massive explosions, realistic smoke, sunrays, and massive water surfaces.

3D games need to improve faster, they need to get closer to nature. Graphics change quite quickly thanks to new shader effects. The water looks very realistic, the effects of weather and sunlight become more natural. The movie filter in Mass Effect is controversial - somewhat coarse grain creates a blur that defocuses edges and colors a little. This leads to a more realistic display of the environment and people, but not everyone likes this blur.

Lighting and glare

HDR rendering has become the most important step in ambient lighting; it is almost impossible to create reflections on silver and gold without the effect of shine. HDR rendering blurs illuminated surfaces and strong light sources. The sun illuminates the clouds in the sky, metal objects reflect the light. Hollywood also uses similar effects, for example, when the operator points the camera directly at a light source, computer graphics blind the viewer or create special effects. The potential of this has long been understood, and the new cameras capture natural HDR effects much better than before.

The shine effect can look completely different from one game to the next. In Oblivion, the developers got the best results with gold and silver. Rainbow Six Las Vegas uses UT3 Engine with DirectX 10. Light sources and neon lamps are rather unpleasant dazzling, scenes look milky and overly bright. Blacksite Area 51 (UT3 Engine) also dazzles with light quite actively, although in the game you will spend more time traveling through the desert, where there are practically no excessive light sources. Only Mass Effect seems to have taken control of the UT3 Engine. Blinding effect has been reduced to an acceptable level. Assassins Creed (DirectX 10) also delivered convincing results. The sun and candles give off a golden yellow glow, and the graphics are almost photographic.

A side effect of direct sunlight is lens flare, which is tiny circles of light in your field of view. In older games, the sun and glare effects were drawn and simulated, just like the background graphics. In new games, circles of light can move around the field of view, and even appear when a light source is slowly revealed by an object.

Light 2.0

Another effect of HDR rendering is the display of rays that literally pierce the dark environment. In Hollywood movies, you can probably remember the bullet holes in the plywood walls through which the light shines through the room. The new generation of DirectX 10 games use this effect, in particular, to enhance the setting of the sun. If the shining solar circle is hidden behind trees or a window, then the light penetrates through them in the form of clear rays.

Feature Crysis and Stalker: Clear Sky is a realistic change of day and night, lighting conditions change depending on the location of the sun and the player. However, this kind of computer effect still falls short of the intensity of photographs or Hollywood films; the situation should improve with the new generation of GPUs.

Shadows

Where there is light, there is shadow. To make objects in a lit environment look more realistic, shadows are needed, and they must move with the light source. But enabling shadows almost always costs a lot of valuable 3D performance, so the faster the graphics card, the more sophisticated effects it can produce without over-hitting performance. In Oblivion, it was possible to invest up to 30% of the graphics performance in shadows on faces, grass shadows, and foliage only.

Older games with standard shadows often displayed shadows as a darkened circle; the subject was always centered regardless of the lighting. In next-generation games, the character was stenciled to the surface, often using a simplified model. This can be clearly seen in Morrowind, since clothes are completely ignored, a naked body is superimposed on the surface.

Doom 3 was a small revolution. All of a sudden, multiple light sources appeared in the game, such as ceiling lights or spotlights that cast shadows on the walls, floor and ceiling at the same time. As the player and monsters move, the shadows move, following fixed light sources, getting longer or shorter. To tickle your nerves even more, the game features hanging, flashing and rotating lamps that create twitching and dancing shadows on the walls.

Modern games use soft shadows that completely overlay the character template with good detail. Depending on the position of the sun, the shadows of the character and the environment become sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. In Stalker or Crysis, you can even see a shadowy image of individual branches or leaves on the floor. Even if this sounds like a simple graphical trick, it is very important for perception in real-time games, as it allows you to react more quickly to movements.

Character development

The following illustrations show the development of the characters with whom you shared computer time behind the screen. Let's start from 1997; Diablo can be considered an iconic game because it appearance the character changed depending on the used armor or weapons. In 3D, Morrowind is also an important step forward. A naked character looks ugly, but once you put on complex and multi-piece armor, the level of detail changes dramatically. There are shoes, shirts, trousers, raincoats, jackets, oversleeves, bibs, shoulder pads, helmets, weapons and shields.

The level of detail of real-time or adventure games could not be matched for a long time. In 2004, Half Life 2 set a new standard for facial expressions and character animation. At that time, NVIDIA launched a campaign to promote shaders that allowed for realistic skin tones and personalized facial expressions. In 2006, strategy and RPG / adventure games have become so detailed that even if you get close to the camera, you can hardly tell the difference between them and real 3D games.

As a sequel to Morrowind, Oblivion has also become a landmark event in the graphics world. For the first time in the game, HDR rendering (Shader Model 3) was used, and armor and swords began to really shine. The complexity of drawing the character's faces was very impressive; many adjustment sliders additionally included an individual cut and eye color, the shape of the lips, chin, mouth and head, as a result of which the hero could become distinguishable, with his own face. However, such a wide adjustment of the options in the game did not lead to any effect. In Oblivion, you can only play for yourself alone, and computer characters (NPCs) are not interested in your appearance and face at all.

New games like Hellgate London should benefit from this complication, since characters can meet over the Internet, and personal appearances are welcome. The difference is limited to figure size, hair, skin color, and various outfits that allow the character to stand out from the crowd. If you look at the development that took place between Oblivion and Drakensang, you will surely notice the current stagnation situation. The environment effects evolve, but the hero detail remains the same.

The following illustration shows the additional characters and differences that the lighting model used gives. Doom 3 uses a lot of light and shadows to make the graphics look more detailed. Gothic 3 and Oblivion hit the market in 2006. But while Gothic 3 continued to use the old bloom lighting effects, Oblivion was based on a new HDR rendering that highlights shiny areas and highlights colored surfaces more gently and accurately. The transition to DirectX 10 can be seen in Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect games. Improved HDR rendering (Shader 4) allows graphics to look more realistic.

Depth Effects and Bump Mapping

The early games had to be content with a global light source, and shadows and structures were simply added to the scene. The evolution of 3D graphics has given objects more detail, and various light sources have given additional shadows. Since many objects were still made from large surfaces, structures like glass, leaves, or sand were simply superimposed as a flat texture. If something, for example, rails or a stone, needed to go beyond the plane, then they had to be set on the stage as full-fledged 3D objects.

The simplest form of this technique was called bump mapping, where the bump information was simply simulated. The surface remained smooth, the geometry of the object did not actually change.

In modern games, the parallax mapping effect is even better. If you look at the surface, the structure is very detailed. However, the detail of the texture depends on the lighting and the angle of view. The smaller the angle, the less the depth effect will be noticeable.

The next generation of technology is displacement mapping. With this technique, the surface gets an appropriate texture that even generates shadows; irregularities also change the geometry of the object. The angle of view is no longer important as the effect of depth is always visible.

Ball with bump mapping (left) and displacement mapping (right).

Vegetation, trees and forest

With the advent of the GeForce 256, the transformation and lighting tasks came under the responsibility of the graphics chip. Prior to this, calculations were performed on the CPU. Faster graphics cards were supposed to increase the level of detail and the number of 3D objects.

A 3D game requires a lot more than one tree of actual leaves, although even the most modern games continue to use tricks. To keep the computational load as low as possible, only coarse structures such as a tree trunk, thick branches, or the main bush frame are created as real objects. Grass, reeds, leaves and branches are textures, that is, painted surfaces that simulate lush vegetation. This allows you to draw a full-fledged forest, but neither leaves nor branches will react to touch - the player will walk through them as if they did not exist. If the game is not so difficult, then foliage and bushes do not even provide an opportunity to hide behind them from the enemy, although you cannot see anything through them.

In the old games, the forest consisted of several trees in a row. Only recently, in Far Cry and Crysis, it has become possible to create the impression of an impenetrable jungle with lush vegetation, located without any order. Oblivion can be upgraded with the Qarls Texture Pack, which transforms a monotonous landscape into a richer, richer and more vibrant landscape. 3D games still can't reach the level of detail in nature; even in Hollywood, stunt results are better. In the left picture, you can see the trees after digital processing, you can see this by the slightly lighter shades.

Could it be better?

Several screenshots of Crysis and Far Cry 2 are quite interesting. The top left picture from Crysis is standard - in DirectX 10 mode, the lighting is a little blinding, the colors are not so well developed. The top right picture was most likely taken with Natural Mod: colors and lighting are better matched, the overall impression is much stronger. Below right is the official screenshot from the manufacturer. Even if it was taken with a motion blur effect, the color intensity and rich green color of transparent leaves are not observed in a real game, even on HD 4870 or GTX 280 video cards.

As far as Far Cry 2 is concerned, there are different versions of the same game. The largest picture was probably taken on the Xbox, the 3D graphics are quite accurate. The small picture in the middle corresponds to the PC version: there is a slight defocusing, lighting effects create a slight fog. The two pictures on the right are, again, official screenshots of the manufacturer. On them you can see that the intensity of the light rays is very deep, the details on the ground look better, the structure of the rocks is realistic, and the complex trees and shrubs are simply impressive.

Evolution of buildings

Thanks to faster graphics cards and better textures, the level of detail of buildings has improved significantly. In early 3D games, houses, stone walls and tunnels looked flat, and uneven structures were created by simple rendering. As computing power increased, more and more built-in structures appeared in games; interiors and architecture became more complex, the number of niches, corners, pillars, ledges and columns increased rapidly. In modern games, you can see more complex structures that look more and more realistic. Of course, PC games still can't compete with Hollywood. Even the computer generated structures in the movies are much more detailed.

Cities are a completely different matter. Game developers today are quite capable of creating the illusion of a small town. However, most of the buildings will be just a screen - a house with four walls and a roof, but no interior. To prevent the gamer from getting lost, there are two methods: Morrowind, Gothic and Oblivion allow the gamer to enter almost all houses, but the number of buildings is small, even in cities. GTA, Assassin's Creed and Half Life 2 simulate a big city, but you can only enter the buildings that are important for the game. Everything else is just a screen.

Not high enough

Cracked paint and rusty areas can also be simulated well, but with scale it is not so easy. Game developers do not think big, so it is rare for buildings that you can enter to reach three stories in height. There is always a fear of distance: in multiplayer shooters, people get lost, the range of weapons is too short, and the visible area on a PC is limited by either 3D performance or other limitations of the video card.

Technique

The realism of racing has long depended on computing power. Tricks such as reduced environmental detail, blurry textures, and limited visibility with fog were often used. Recently, such tricks have already become unnecessary, since the 3D performance of computer systems is already quite sufficient to display the street along which the route passes, with the same detail as the car itself. Races now have the effects of speed, reflection and different models damage. It is hardly surprising that artists will concentrate more on cars that look more realistic than ever.

in the second part of the article we will talk about fire, water, Hollywood monsters, special effects and physics.

Computer games appeared almost half a century ago. Just think - nearly fifty years have passed! This is a huge period, and it can already be compared with the time of the existence of cinema and television.

But unlike its "older brothers", the gaming industry has been transformed many times beyond recognition. The appearance of games was changing rapidly, and new technologies appeared in a matter of years, surprised everyone around them and instantly became obsolete. The history of graphics in games is the history of technical revolutions that have ceased to thunder only in recent years. It's time to look back and see where it all began.

In the beginning there was a lamp. And the lamp was information, and that information was a bit. The first electronic entertainment device was created by an MIT mathematician Raymond Redhoeffer in 1941. And this is not a typo. It was in the forty-first that the first electronic game appeared!

Echo of War. Drawer for him.
It all started with him.

The device was a box with red lights and black toggle switches. It was very primitive, but you can already play against it. him Is an ancient Chinese logic game in which players take turns removing chips from the table, and the one who removes the last loses. Artificial intelligence for playing in it, it is perfectly algorithmic - that's why in some ten years the British company “ Ferranti"Created a computer" Nimrod”, Which had great success at scientific exhibitions. The rows of chips in it symbolized three rows of lamps.

Also in 1951, a British scientist Christopher Strechie taught the designed yet Alan Turing tube computer Pilot ACE play checkers. The computer also did not have a screen, and to make moves it was necessary to turn a disk, similar to a telephone one.

Bulbs of electronic machines for playing checkers and him were the first of their kind "pixels" on the playing field. But the history of video games is still usually counted not from light bulbs, but from the moment when computers got monitors. And they weren't always bitmap screens. Sometimes ordinary cathode ray tubes or oscilloscopes were enough.

Dash like an oscilloscope arrow

EDSAC emulator with OXO game. Note the dial in the corner.

In 1947, American physicists Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Astle Ray Mann patented the first game using a cathode ray tube. The ballistic missile simulator was simply called “ Cathode ray tube entertainment device". Its meaning was to hit a target drawn on top of the screen with a point of light, using the handles to change the speed and direction of the rocket. The authors were inspired by the concept of radars, which appeared just during the war. The inventors assembled the prototype, but neither it nor even its photograph has survived to this day. All we have are drawings and diagrams from the patent application. It's a shame.

1952 British scientist Alexander Douglas, while defending his doctoral dissertation on human-computer interaction, created a tic-tac-toe game on the university computer EDSAC called OXO... It was the first game with a fixed "resolution" - 35 by 16 pixels on the screen. The screen, by the way, was round like a hobbit. Then they were all like that. OXO was also controlled by a "telephone" dial.

1958 (note the leap in chronology) American physicist William Highjinbotham digging into an analog computer, I decided to misuse its trajectory calculation capabilities ballistic missiles... The scientist replaced the boring rockets with a cheerful ball, and it turned out Tennis for Two- a toy that many now consider the first in the world. It had already advanced realistic physics with gravity, impact kinematics and friction force. It was for her that an oscilloscope was used instead of a full-fledged screen.

For the half-century anniversary of Tennis for Two, enthusiasts have restored the game. The oscilloscope picture (seen on the left) was displayed on a large monitor for convenience.

Spacewar! on the only DEC PDP-1 that has survived to this day (this is only a monitor - the lockers with the computer itself were not included in the frame).

And in 1961, American scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created the notorious Spacewar!- the first shareware game. She, however, was not sold by itself, but was attached to the computer. DEC PDP-1 as a testing program. Screen in Spacewar! was also round, but on it against the background of real constellations ships flew and fired at each other. All this could already be called graphics - monochrome, but pretty.

Of course, super-powerful iron helped create such a miracle. The DEC PDP-1 was a unique computer of its kind. It had 9 kilobytes of memory (the volume could be increased to 144 kilobytes!), A 200 kilohertz processor and a high-speed punched tape reader. Outwardly, this computer most of all resembled several lockers filled with electronics, which were accompanied by an electric typewriter and a round monitor. The PDP-1 occupied half a room. However, the widespread use of Spacewar! hindered not only the physical dimensions of the "gaming platform", but also the price. In terms of modern dollars, the PDP-1 cost about a hundred thousand!

Timelessness and the Big Bang

Spacewar! was established in 1961. The first home entertainment system Magnavox odyssey went on sale after some eleven years. Rate the speed of technology development! True, the first console was conceived by an American "defense engineer" Ralph Baer back in 1966, but it was launched into production only five years later. You can also remember the first electronic arcade machines. Computer space and Galaxy Game- they also appeared in 1971. But, one way or another, it turns out a gap of a decade.

It was a period of timelessness, when the games seemed to be forgotten and only a few enthusiasts tried to convince their bosses of the prospects of the still non-existent gaming industry. Very, very slowly, the idea of ​​video games took shape, and just as slowly computer technology took off from the ground, so that later, obeying Moore's law, soar exponentially into the sky.

We will not talk a lot about consoles here (this is a separate interesting topic), but the first console in history, Magnavox Odyssey, should be described at least for contrast. It was a large plastic box, to which two smaller plastic boxes were attached on rigid cords. The games were controlled by twisting three knobs.

Three rectangles on the screen give exhaustion
representing
Read about Magnavox Odyssey graphics.

And the graphics ... they were two or three glowing rectangles that you could move around on the screen. The most advanced game was a kind of ping-pong, where the square could be thrown back and forth. At least somehow it looked like a game and shooting rectangles with a light shotgun, which was attached to the console. In other games, graphics were replaced by colored translucent background pictures - they had to be superimposed on the TV. On one sheet, an abandoned house was depicted, on the other, a labyrinth or a ski track. There was no gameplay at all. White squares simply replaced game pieces - they were moved back and forth across a dark screen, depicting a cat chasing a mouse, walking around a haunted mansion or skiing. Many games generally came with stacks of cardboard "board" cards with questions like "where is Texas?" The console couldn't even keep track of or validate the answers!

But the camel does not rise to spit on Odyssey. Its creators cannot be denied imagination. In twelve games, embedded in the console, they laid the foundations for the genre of puzzle, questionnaire, racing, horror, roulette - and all this on extremely primitive hardware. It really was very cheap and prehistoric even by the standards of the early seventies. Even Spacewar was too tough for the Magnavox Odyssey! - game of eleven years ago! But the device did its job - it caused the Big Boom of game consoles and arcade machines.

In the same 1972, the legendary Pong... And then off we go, new systems, already with some gameplay, began to appear like mushrooms after rain - Atari pong, Coleco Telstar, Nintendo Color TV Game... In the second half of the seventies, the first color consoles appeared with a decent (over 100x200 pixels) picture resolution - Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision... There were many of them. And very few of them became after the notorious collapse of 1983.

However, we are not interested in consoles, but in computers. What happened to them in the seventies?

We are so different, diverse

And this is what happened to them: the technology developed, the parts became smaller and cheaper. There is a demand for home cars.

In 1975, the first "personal computer" appeared Sphere 1, which, however, became famous only for the fact that it introduced the Ctrl + Alt + Delete key combination into use. In 1977, the first mass-produced personal computer was released. Commodore PET, and then - Apple II and Tandy TRS-80... A "triad" of home computer manufacturers was formed, which were later wedged in Atari 8-bit, Sinclair with famous ZX, Acorn with BBC Micro, Amstrad with Color Personal Computer, Texas Instruments and other companies.

The Apple II, like many other computers in those years, was its own keyboard. The drives dangled separately and often served as a monitor stand.

The graphics of this gaggle of motley computers were ... okay! Actually, computer games began with them - it was only later that IBM PC-compatible machines came to everything ready.

"Breadbasket" is an unromantic but apt nickname for the Commodore 64.

Take the Apple II, for example. This computer had excellent graphics capabilities by the standards of the late seventies. Resolution up to 280x192 pixels and a palette of sixteen colors made it an excellent gaming platform. Apple II began The Bard's Tale, Castle wolfenstein, Flight simulator, Karateka, King "s Bounty, Lode runner, Prince of persia and Ultima... But what is there - wielding only monochrome mode, Ken and Roberta Williams in 1980 created Mystery House, the forerunner of all Sierra quests.

Cars Atari 8-bit were weaker graphically, but that did not stop them from grabbing their share of the glory. They started coming out in 1979. Their resolution was good, 320x192, but not very good with the palette. Up to four colors in normal graphics modes is frankly sparse. Only with the help of clever tricks could the computer show 256 visible shades on the screen - albeit with a low resolution and not on all televisions.

The most famous home computer of those years was released in 1982 Commodore 64, for its characteristic shape affectionately nicknamed among the people "breadbasket". He could boast of many advantages - a relatively low price, a resolution of 320x200, an honest palette of 16 colors and support for eight sprites on the screen. Commodore 64 released games for the first time Maniac mansion(forerunner of Day of the Tentacle), Wasteland(forerunner of Fallout) and Sid Meier "s Pirates!(just a forerunner).

We remind you: sprites are two-dimensional, often animated images that are usually superimposed on the background. Characters in the form of sprites do not distract a lot of computer resources and at the same time can be very realistic (in fact, sprites have successfully survived to the Doom era and even survived it).

Phantom menace

And here is the hero of the occasion - IBM PC 5150.With a keyboard separate from the system unit
the swarm that many had
to my liking.

There were many computers - good and different. But came ponderous IBM PC and broke the teremok. With an open architecture that has proven to be very successful and easily expandable, IBM has pounded everyone - including itself. PC-compatible machines flooded all around, and in the early nineties other platforms almost died out (with the exception of Apple Macintosh).

Who then, in August 1981, could see the IBM PC 5150 as a competitor to home computers? Well, yes, powerful hardware, processor Intel 8088 about 29,000 transistors, speed under five megahertz, addressing up to a megabyte (where is that much?), a gorgeous keyboard, floppy disks ... But why all this, if the screen displays four colors at best? The 320x200 resolution was considered quite decent, but the graphics adapter CGA("C" for "Color") only supported a four-color palette, so older PC games are easily recognizable by the two dominant colors cyan and magenta. Of course, some craftsmen managed to show more colors on CGA, using the features ("artifacts") of the television signal. But few game creators have stooped to such hacking techniques, especially since these tricks did not work on every TV. In modern emulators, they cannot be reproduced at all.

The "alternative" to CGA was an adapter MDA- its resolution was higher, but it was monochrome and only supported text and pseudo graphics. And this, you understand, is generally not serious. More precisely, on the contrary, it is serious and suitable for business, but not for games.

For your information: the lack of graphics is not the end. Indeed, in text mode, you can visit "multiplayer dungeons" MUD, play text role-playing games ( Zork) or even use pseudo-graphics ( Rogue, NetHack, Adom).

Hercules graphics cards squeaked, but could show color play on a monochrome monitor.

Finally, the price ... She made me think. IBM charged a heavy price tag for its first PC. In terms of modern money, a computer in a "bare" configuration cost three and a half thousand dollars, and with a monitor and a floppy drive (without a hard drive) - under seven thousand. For that kind of money, you could buy half a dozen Commodore 64s!

The IBM PC was not helped either by the lack of sensible sound. The built-in squeaker was not good for anything; it was possible to extract something remotely reminiscent of music or a voice from it only with great tricks. And sound cards only became popular in the late eighties.

So the players were buying home computers. For many years "Pisyuki" remained business machines for those who were ready to overpay for powerful hardware, an advanced keyboard and convenient floppy disks. Well, and, of course, for those who did not care about the narrow CGA palette and the complete lack of graphics in MDA adapters.

It is interesting: and in 1982 video cards came from outside Hercules... They could emulate color on monochrome displays by "dithering" (imitation of halftones with scattering of dots). At the same time, the picture turned out, let's say, specific. But for those without access to color monitors, this was the only way to play the originally colored games.

There should be only one left

Prince of Persia screensaver in three graphs
iCal modes. Top to bottom: CGA, EGA, VGA.

Three years have passed. August again - but already 1984. IBM is releasing an "improved" graphics adapter. Enhanced Graphics Adapter... Abbreviated - EGA.

There are already 64 colors, of which sixteen are displayed on the screen. This resolution is up to 640 by 350 pixels. Not yet photorealism. You will not be able to watch a video on such a screen yet. But out of sixteen shades, you can create a very colorful picture! From now on, nothing prevents the creation and transfer of modern games to the latest IBM PC-compatible machines.

In 1984, new computers with EGA graphics were very expensive. But over time, it becomes more widespread, and the general enthusiasm for open architecture leads to the fact that "pussies" slowly but surely begin to crush with a mass - and, therefore, become cheaper.

Despite the fact that the CGA format survived until the nineties due to its cheapness, PC games in the second half of the eighties came out mainly in sixteen EGA colors. Typical EGA Games - First Quests Sierra (King "s Quest, Space quest) and arcade Apogee (Duke nukem, Commander keen). At the same time, many games supported both formats, and sometimes even monochrome screens.

The arrival of the 16-color adapter from IBM and an army of copycats marked a clear atari for Atari and other home machines. In addition, Commodore's price war against Texas Instruments (and everyone else) severely crippled the market and swept out many of the participants. But those who stay afloat do not sleep and update the models. Cars are coming out on a new 16-bit processor Motorola 68000 — Apple Macintosh 128K, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga 500... There were even more colors, and the Macintosh 128K was the first to introduce a "mouse" graphical interface - long before the first versions Windows.

But, despite all their merits, Atari and Commodore can no longer do anything. The sweaty shaft of PC-compatible devices is flooding the market. IBM is right to enjoy the confusion. Including our own, because third-party manufacturers very successfully compete with the "original" IBM PC and the market is rapidly slipping out of hand. Comes to the ridiculous - in 1986, the first IBM PC-compatible machine based on a super-powerful 32-bit processor 80386 turns out to be a computer Compaq, not IBM.

100,000,000 colors

Phantasmagoria is one of the best "movie" games out there. The actors are real, the backgrounds are pre-rendered.

In 1987, IBM launches a computer model PS / 2, and with it a new graphics specification comes into the world - VGA, that is Video Graphic Array... It comes and remains.

The maximum VGA resolution - 640x480 - has become a classic. Later, craftsmen learned to "stretch" it up to 800x600, and these numbers are also now considered sacred. Game creators were more interested in the 320x200 mode, because it was in this mode that VGA flourished in 256 shades out of 262,144 possible.

The VGA specification gave games a "modern" look that is not obsolete to this day. The 256-color palette turned out to be a new revolution in graphics. It not only provided a realistic picture, but also allowed video clips to be inserted into games. By the mid-nineties, the craze for video in games peaked ( The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, Companions of Xanth, series Wing Commander, Command & Conquer, Star Wars: Rebel Assault). A big role in this video madness was played by the mass distribution of CD-drives - ten years after their invention.

By the way: the ability to insert a full-fledged video into games opened the way for "cartoon" games. Including plasticine quests, of which the best was, of course, the great The neverhood.

Without VGA, there would be no LucasArts' famous cartoon quests like Day of the Tentacle.

Quests LucasArts (Day of the Tentacle, Sam & max hit the road, Full throttle, The curse of monkey island) have become classics largely thanks to new graphics and a hitherto unprecedented "interactive cartoon" effect. Old games were massively re-released in VGA mode. Sierra was especially keen on this, having remade many old quests with a text interface for VGA. Computers with EGA cards first shifted to the "budget" range, and then left the market altogether. The industry has undergone a complete transformation.

VGA mode is the last to be implemented by IBM. An attempt to create in 1990 a new one called XGA("EXtended VGA") failed. IBM didn’t decide anything anymore, because the regime had been on the market for a year as usual SVGA(800x600 and higher), created by an independent consortium VESA(Video Electronics Standards Association). Later, in the nineties, video cards and systems appeared with higher resolution and even greater color depth. But the difference between 256 and 65535 colors ( Hi-Color) and even 16 million colors ( True Color) is not so great as to be called revolutionary.

So, the beginning of the nineties is in the yard. The golden era of quests, the flourishing of new genres, the time of the meteoric rise of computer technology. The latest IBM PC-compatible machines have become a paradise for the eyes and a purgatory for the wallet. Two dimensions are mastered - far and wide. Where to go?

It is clear where!

Doom as a mirror of the tech revolution

In 1993 Doom blew up the games industry, making the game not a living picture, but a window to another world. But the creation of id Software, of course, did not become the first three-dimensional game, and if we can find fault, then even three-dimensional.

For your information: it is worth remembering that Quake, released in 1996, is not the first first-person game with "real" 3D interiors. It was furnished at the bend System Shock from the studio Looking Glass released two years earlier. System Shock is considered the first 3D first-person shooter, although we love it for more than that.

Where without devils and chainsaws of the Doom series!

The heroes of Exctatica are definitely not "angular".

The first successful attempts to draw three dimensions on the screen were made in the seventies. Computer Spasim with honest "wire" planets and ships was invented in 1974. In the eightieth, American arcade machine lovers were Battlezone, shooting enemy tanks - also "wire". Racing games on early consoles and home computers diligently mimicked 3D perspective, and in some cases rendered it honestly. A simple monochrome vector 3D could be drawn even on the Atari 2600 from the second half of the seventies, and even more so on the first personal computers. After all, it was on the Apple II that the first version was created. Flight simulator.

In the first half of the eighties, 3D vector graphics became commonplace, and developers learned to make objects "opaque" by cutting off invisible lines. In 1983 Atari created I, Robot- the first arcade machine with "painted" models and with luxurious shading at that time. And in 1983 the famous Elite- on some platforms it was "wire", on others - "painted".

The models became more and more complex, they had shadows, and the scene rendering speed was constantly increasing. The hitherto unprecedented possibilities of three-dimensional graphics gave rise to the heyday of simulators of equipment - automobile, aviation and even tank. But it wasn't until 1991 that it came to textures. The first conditionally three-dimensional game with textures is considered Catacomb 3-D from the infamous team of John Carmack. What happened next, everyone knows - Wolfenstein 3d(1992) and Doom (1993).

It is interesting: Check out the growing appetite for id Software products! Catacomb 3-D also had EGA graphics. A year later, Wolf 3D already required VGA and an 80286 processor. A year later, Doom rolled its lips onto an 80386 processor and four megabytes of memory on top of the usual 640K, and Doom II: Hell on Earth (it came out a year later) was terribly slow on anything less than at 80486.

Quake turned out to be a little goofy, but it was she who popularized Internet battles and acceleration
3D graphics.

After Doom, the first-person action genre was born and began to develop rapidly. A crowd of imitators came, and the first competitors emerged.

Other genres were in no hurry to adopt the latest 3D technologies. In the cosmos Star Wars: X-Wing and TIE: Fighter(LucasArts) the developers used textures very conditionally, saving computer resources. In quests, 3D was more of a hindrance at first. The "early 3D" looked very unattractive compared to the "late 2D". But drawing games by hand was a thing of the past. Quest heroes became three-dimensional, and the scenery was created in 3D editors ( Syberia, 2002). Not all games have benefited from the 3D hobby - the fourth part of the Monkey Island series (2000) was simply ruined by the third dimension.

It is interesting: there were attempts to do something completely new, three-dimensional, but not tied to triangles. In the mid-nineties, an interesting attempt to "twist heroes out of balls" was a series of action films - "slashers" Ecstatica (Andrew Spencer Studios). They did not have a single triangle and not a single texture - the backdrops were pictures, as in Alone in the Dark(I-Motion, 1992), and all characters, enemies and objects are made of multi-colored ellipsoids.

However, in action films, the technology "3D with textures" developed rapidly, and after the release Quake(1996) she ran into insufficient iron performance. Even the latest processors Intel Pentium that appeared in 1993 raised a white flag when there were too many surfaces in the frame to texture.

A new solution was required. New magic was needed.

What do you know about voodoo?

Initially, hardware 3D acceleration was the domain of specialized computer systems such as workstations. Silicon Graphics on which Hollywood films were created. The first "3D-video card" that could be plugged into a personal computer appeared in 1984 and was simply called IBM Professional Graphics Controller and cost about nine thousand dollars in modern money.

Diamond Monster 3D is a dream,
polished in silicon and PCB.

It was intended specifically for professionals working with graphics and engineering design. At that time, she had very rich opportunities. First, it accelerated work with both 2D and 3D. Secondly, at the time when VGA did not exist in nature, the card allowed displaying a picture with a palette of 256 colors and with a resolution of 640x480! Of course, the players needed it like an umbrella for a fish - there were still twelve years left before the first games supporting 3D acceleration were released.

3D acceleration came to computer games in the mid-nineties, but it took a long time to winters. In 1995, a video card was released S3 ViRGE, which could technically accelerate 3D, but in practice turned out to be so unfortunate that it received the nickname "graphics slower".

Only a year later the company 3dfx released a graphics processor Voodoo Graphics... He marked a new revolution. The first accelerators based on Voodoo chips were not video cards - a separate expansion card that was connected to the monitor. Ugly squares of pixels are finally a thing of the past - textures have become smooth and accurate, and the speed of games has noticeably increased. The world was conquered. The legendary series of accelerators has become the dream of the players Diamond Monster 3D.

At first, there were few games that supported hardware acceleration, but the popularity of Voodoo accelerators has been explosive. In the life of each player entered Glide, OpenGL, Direct3D and other scary words. By the end of the nineties, there were no problems finding a game for Voodoo. Another problem arose - the latest games were naughty, demanding the coveted Voodoo, Voodoo2 or even something better. In 1998 Half-life, for example, it started without hardware acceleration, but it looked so pathetic, and the processor puffed so helplessly that it became clear that one could not do without the "Monster". And already in 1999 the action movie Aliens vs. Predator discarded bashfulness and in the most impudent way refused to work without 3D hardware.

Half-Life taught players to love 3D acceleration and fear cascading resonance.

Crysis is the latest game from the romantic era. After it, the progress of computer graphics finally froze.

In the same year with the appearance DirectX 7.0 and video cards Nvidia GeForce 256 Hardware shaping of geometry and lighting has become the new standard. This freed the central processor from potential "gags" in scenes with a large number of triangles.

By the end of the twentieth century, the speed of development of computer technology was completely unthinkable. Hardware and game graphics have become obsolete in a year. Accelerators, video cards, interface connectors, hundreds of megabytes of memory, processors with proud badges, motherboards with variegated tails - everyone flashed before us, everyone was here.

The last big graphics revolution came from the GeForce 3, which, along with DirectX 8.0, brought us pixel shaders. Without these small programs, there would be no realistic water The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, no shabby interiors BioShock, no brutal faces of partners in Crysis.

Then the technology developed smoothly. The picture improved (anisotropic filtering of textures, anti-aliasing of "ladders"), shaders increased the index, the number of triangles in a frame grew, and post-processing effects became popular.

But then everything changed. The revolutions are over.

Voxel-moxel

Do you know what is voxels and what are they good for? How long have you seen them in games? (Personally, I have been for a very long time.)

Comanche: Maximum Overkill. The squares in the snowdrifts are voxels.

Nowadays, voxels are almost forgotten. But in the late nineties, 3D graphics based on them were very popular and competed with polygonal ones! Voxels (volumetric pixels) made it possible to create realistic landscapes without any special claims to the computer, which, in addition, could be destructible.

The most famous games with such landscapes were the helicopter simulator series. Comanche(1992) and militants Delta force(1998) from NovaLogic... Domestic developers have used this unusual technology to the maximum. Voxels were used in free-flowing landscapes " Vanger", In a sponge" Perimeter»From K-D LAB and among the alien hills Z.A.R. from Maddox Games.

Voxels have also been used to render objects in 2D or 3D games. Crosses and gravestones were made from cubes in action movie Blood (3D Realms, Monolith), as well as vehicles on strategic maps in some games in the series Command & Conquer from Westwood.

"Perimeter". Scam can be copied. You don't have to dig. You can make a zero layer, but it takes a lot of digging.

The original technology was ruined by its uniqueness. It was of little use other than drawing hills and simple objects, and complex models and detailed landscapes put a heavy load on the computer. 3D accelerators didn't know how to work with voxels, and it was easier for game developers to make a world out of triangles than to tinker with naughty cubes. For the last time, voxel technology shone with facets in Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem from Team17... The islands, made of volumetric "details", were destroyed and "nibbled" by explosions almost as effectively as the flat battlefields from the previous parts of Worms.

Now voxel technologies are used only in modeling and in editing maps. They left the games, but their business lives on. How exactly does it live? Not bad! Look at least at Minecraft! Technically speaking, all these mountains and plains are bunches of polygonal and textured cubes. But in spirit it is a typical voxel landscape.

End of the story?

At the beginning of the 2000s, the development of graphic technologies slowed down dramatically. The milestone after which all graphics look modern goes somewhere in 2002-2004.

In 2000, for example, the most beautiful platformer happened American McGee's Alice... But its appearance is morally outdated in a matter of years. Now it already looks like an artifact from the past - Wonderland, its inhabitants and Alice herself clearly lacks triangles. Bandits Max payne(2001) and soldiers Medal of Honor: Allied Assault(2002) also suffer from Buratinia. But on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time(2003) can already be watched without a shudder. A Half-life 2 and Doom 3(2004) did not grow old at all - and after all, more than seven years have passed!

Why? And who can explain the mysterious paradox with the subjective perception of graphics World of warcraft? Indeed, even before the release in 2004, it was considered by all to be morally obsolete. But the further, the more steadfastly millions of players endure it. How so?

And the answer is simple: the extensive development of graphics has almost stopped. Previously, it seemed that in a few years the picture in games would reach a fundamentally new level - and this was a normal extrapolation, because this is how it behaved before. Experience suggested that if at the end of the nineties everything was changing around, then it will continue to be so. But now no one needs the bar set Crysis... Developers can no longer afford to focus on the future of hardware and create deliberately "overwhelming" games. And the point, of course, is not that the consoles seized power. The consoles of the current generation have not been replaced for so long for the same reason - there is no new hardware to bet on.

Is this the end of the story? Really AMD, Intel and Nvidia will they languidly trample on the market ring, forgetting past battles? Players will no longer read processor and graphics card test reports like battlefield reports. The art of overclocking hardware will become a thing of the past - after all, there is no point in digging into the computer, trying to snatch two or three more frames per second from the game. Few people will be interested in new items in graphic technologies - all the same, changes in the picture can be seen only through a magnifying glass. A full-fledged stereo will continue to be only the lot of large cinemas.

It looks like this will be the case in the coming years. But every cloud has a silver lining! After all, you no longer have to throw your computer in a landfill every year, which means a whole wallet. You don't have to be an archaeologist to play last year's games. No need to muster up the courage to play any TES IV: Oblivion five years ago. And it's good that the console games transferred to the PC no longer offend the eye, as in their time Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas... You can also live without revolutions. After all, sooner or later, everyone should have come to understand that the main thing is still not the schedule.