A History of Computer Graphics 

BOY I WAS THINKING OF THIS IN MY HEAD MINUTES AGO. THE ACCURACY DUDE

i m born in 1972 and i m happy i knew all of this. I had a commodore 64 when i was 10, an amiga 500 then PC with 486 , i played first pong, space invaders , the first consoles cbs, intellevision, and lots others and i still play today. For sure it was great to know the firsts, the first digitalized sound, the first vocal, the first isomectric, the first real 3d, the first 3d with textures, the first shaders. Lots of innovations and revolutions until today .

in 20 years. 4k will be so easy to run its ridiculous. I personally can't wait for that. but for now I'm on 1080p

I feel so very fortunate to have grown up with the major evolution of gaming throughout my life. I am 29 now, I have extremely cherished memories of the NES, SNES, N64....I used to sneak onto my brothers playstation so I could play Gran Turismo. There were so many wonderful times with friends, all the LAN parties where you had to all be together so sleepovers were frequent...I mean, I'm talking a feeling I know I could never feel again is what those games brought me as a tiny guy. From Arkanoid to the Simpsons game to Diddy Kong Racing to Banjo Kazooie, Majoras Mask, SOCOM Navy Seals, and a thousand more memories, how does one even start to explain growing up with this stuff?

I'm 50, the first console we had at home had half a dozen versions of Pong on it. Has been a real trip seeing computers grow the way they have and I often think about how we take for granted things that were impossible to even think about back when i was a kid.

He's only 21.... I feel so old.

Very nostalgic Greg. I can still remember back in 1985 when I got my Atari. Then in the 90's my Nintendo Family Computer. 1997 was my Sony PS1. Wow. I feel old now. 20 years from now i'll be in my 60's. probably I'll just play games with my grandchildren then.

This tech channel is underrated. The ability to simplify technology jargon is a skill that should be recognized. Good job Greg.

You're really only 21? Feels nice having a role model that is just a year older then myself.

First games I ever played were GTA 1, Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and some super old "2D racing but tried to look like 3D" on Windows 95. And now look where we are. GTA 5, Planet Coaster, Forza Horizon 3, VR. I really hope we will see advance like this (past 20 years) also in another 20 years :)

I'm 26, and I remembered I played Doom II in my uncle's computer... I was 7 years old back then. Good times jeje. I can't imagine how future games are going to look. To think that 20 years ago a computer could cost around 6000$, and now you can play all new games at medium-high settings with a 600$ computer. Technology is amazing (so are computers). Excellent videos, keep on.

Im 14 and my dad still has a working Commodore 64 and its great seeing how far weve come

Screw Doom and Quake - where's *WOLFENSTEIN 3D* ???

Thanks for this Nostalgic trip, I started gaming in the Arcades which got me inspired of how video game graphics evolved over time.

In all the time in your life you've watched this develop, I'm 32 and started gaming with the first NES the week it came out. Watching the development in graphics has truly been insane.

I can remember queuing to play on the Nintendo 64 at an expo in the mid 90s, I was a teenager. This seemed like a pivotal moment, so exciting to see such advanced graphics. The PSX had tomb raider, and N64 has Mario 64. I can remember eagerly looking forward to swim in 3D for the first time in both of those games. The N64 was working with just 4-8kb texture memory (we're talking 32x32 16-bit textures here), but it seemed so ground breaking. The Analog stick, the Z-trigger, the Rumble pack. Nintendo really brought this game industry tech to the mainstream the way that Apple did with Smart phone with capacitive multi-touch, orientation sensors, GPS. (I say brought to the mainstream as most tech inside consumer electronics is pioneered, developed and supplied by small relatively unknown companies) It's amazing how young adults can talk about the N64 & PSX as being primitive when they really felt like the culmination of decades of blood sweat and tears in the video game industry advancing software while hardware was similarly being advanced. Alas my own kids are growing up on Phones, Tablets and TVs, and VR headsets that are super computers in comparison to the desktop computers we had as kids. I predict in the next 30 years we'll have VR/Neuralink type games with worlds as large as the one we live in, and for most intents and purposes just as detailed (it's not every day that a player needs to use a microscope or a telescope to see such extreme levels of detail, so they can be dealt with as special localized cases). Input interface (motor) will cover entire body either as a sensory suit, or a brain/neural device. Output interface (sense) will likely cover entire body (with some sort of low pressure/vibration/head/cold stimulation), or again a brain/neural device i.e. mapping the entire somatosensory/motor cortex. Essentially near-Matrix level worlds will be possible with just headset hardware. They'll likely still be an approximation of the real world using various optimizations, but it will be sufficiently believable (that is you will probably be able to tell you're not in base reality, but the difference won't really unnerve you. Bit like living in Avatar world).

Dude, you made me feel so old when you said "Uncle's N64" and I turn 35 this month!!!

i honestly dont know why this channel isnt even 500k yet....even 200k!! this channel is one of the best around! keep it up buddy :)

Awesome. My first computer was a Color computer 64 by radioshack, affectionately dubbed the CoCo 64. It used a cassette tape for storage, but also had support built it for carts. I also had a big floppy disk drive for mine too. Ahhh those were the days. I did enjoy Dungeons of Daggorath quite a bit on it though.

Man, is your channel growing fast! Always appreciated your work, and I'm glad the results are actual, too. Have a good day

Great. Thanks for making a video that makes me realize how old I'm getting, lol! My first PC was a hand-me-down 386sx 16mhz. SX meaning it didn't even have a math co-processor... Which sucked because I couldn't even play falcon 3.0 with reasonable frame-rates which I was obsessed with for some reason at that time (my early teens if I recall correctly). I'm just coming back from a lengthy PC gaming hiatus for the past decade or more so I'm just happy to see PC gaming is still here and thriving. For a while there, it looked like PC gaming was getting phased out by consoles.

Man, I subbed at about 40k, and this channel has only gone up. I totally see you where Linus or Austin are in a very short time. Absolutely love your content. 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻

You didn't put the java link for the game :3

2035 i can only imagine you monitor being so clear and crisp it looks actually real with complex shading and lighting to really tie everyhing together

I can remember most of that, at least since the mid-80's! And yes we've come very far. I can remember LCD's arriving, and it took many years to make the transition as a gamer over to them. Running games at 'native' resolution and being locked to 60Hz was an alient concept back then. With our trusty old SVGA monitors the resolution in games was very much a thing. I can remember my rig when Quake arrived could run it at 640 x 480, the goal was 800 x 600 ofc, then you had the 'rich' friend with his shiny new rig running it at 1024 x 768. In fact my last CRT could do vesa resolutions way above 'hd'... although you could barely see the icons on the screen lol, and also close to 100hz.. it seemed we went backwards with LCD's at the time! But then 16x9 made everything better. Anyone else remember making the transition from DOS to Win95? (i didn't have 3.1), man that was a culture shock. Also installing Warcraft off 13 floppy disks (iirc).. kids these days got it easy :P

I really enjoy your newer videos. Keep up the good work.

I was expecting to see more about video graphics like cga, ega, vga, etc.

can you do a video about using a CRT monitor with a modern gaming pc?

Just gonna mention that the Star Wars clip you showed was from the 1997 Special Edition - It was fully rendered in CGI. Still great for the time, but not from 1977 :P

F.Y.I. - that's an Amiga 500 pictured. The 1000 (as captioned) was a more desktop looking version of the Amiga :) Yes, I'm that old and developed for the Amiga. Cheers!

You've been racking up them subs with this amazing content. Only a few weeks till 150k subs. Keep up the great content.

I always said this: the more amazing is not how far we've come but how much farther we will, how current technology will seem old in just 10-15 years

So, in 2001, when "Final Fantasty" was released you were 5/6 years old? Wow!! Love your videos!! You should consider doing a Question & Answer video soon!!

I've been playing games for over 26 years, for me the the moment when the graphics became what i consider to be good was when GL Quake was released, I remember wanting to play it so much, I did some research into which 3d video card to get, I think only the powerVR and 3dfx cards were supported at the time and i decided to get a PowerVR card, the Matrox M3D. playing 640x480 at 30fps and most importantly not having everything pixelated blew my mind.

Once again: a great video ... hope your channel grows fast and you can create more and more content =)

I vividly remember piling in the station wagon with my brothers to go buy Super Mario Brothers 2 in 1988. Then my mind being blown by how great it looked. Good times. PS1 and N64 are the first "nex gen" consoles in my mind. We got a PS2 when I was a senior in high school and I remember playing NHL 2001 and saying "there is no way in hell graphics can possibly get any better than this. This is the limit."

It's pretty amazing when you think about it. I remember being 7 years old and having my mind blown when the Nintendo 64 came out. My mind just couldn't comprehend moving around in a whole 3D environment freely. Experiencing that for the first time is something nobody will ever really feel again. VR's nice of course, but it just doesn't give that same 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT BALLS" feeling like when you're a kid and pick up a PS1/64 for the first time :p

I'm 10 years older than you and I feel you are on the same page. Always enjoy your videos and keep up the good gaming science.

I don't think we will see NEARLY as big of a jump in graphics as we did from the last two decades or so. But, if you asked someone twenty years ago the same question, a lot of them would probably have said the same thing. Who knows what is to come? I'm exited to see.

Damn, this is an excellent video.

Independence day is mostly special effects with models and miniature explosions. Of course, they are layered on top of studio footage, but surprisingly little CGI. For example, the city explosions are just miniature cities placed vertically, with a flamethrower placed at the bottom, and shot in high speed.

21 years old, and with all this knowledge... Really impressive! Keep it up, Greg! (btw, I can't even imagine which type of genius you'll be in 2035... :)

Would like you to get more into details with regards to graphics technology though. Would you wanna do a short video on lighting and shadows?

Earliest games I knew were ones that either utilised DOS games or games that were released when Windows 95/98 was popular, including the rise of Windows XP. My most observed games were those relating to Command and Conquer, Age of Empires I and II, DOOM, Pickle Wars (don't even ask), some educational games like BusyTown, School House of Rock, and other legacy RTS games like Fleet Command. Even the earliest Microsoft Flight Simulators were relevant in my younger years (as early as Flight Simulator 2000 and probably earlier). I do remember a maze game where it had a similar conflict to PAC-MAN, but I don't exactly remember the name of it, but the background colour was plain white... I am sure it was an obscure MS-DOS game that probably wasn't all that popular. Either way, PC games like those were prevalent in my childhood, and that doesn't seem to end there when I had a Game Boy Color, but that would add too much to the current comment. I actually didn't start building PCs until mid-2014, when I helped my older brother build his FX processor based gaming PC, and I'd have wished to have started with building PCs earlier, had my dad the time and capacity or the will to teach me, and had I not beed so young and busy with school. Either way, I have had my fair share of legacy games from both the eighties and nineties, including the early 2000s.

It really puts things into perspective

my 1st computer is Dx286, and only dos, I used all windows versions from beginning to win 10. I saw 3d this time is huge change from the beginning.

Also wanted to add in 1982 Tron was one of the ifrst to use it for at least a for 10-15 minutes in total for CGI in a full feature file before Toy Story had used a full cgi of a movie. Just wanted to mention that since it may have been omitted.

Greg, with the success of this channel, I predict you will become a millionaire by this same point in time next year. You have phenomenal content!

Fun fact. All of the destruction and explosions in the Independence Day were made using real life miniatures. Almost no CGI was used, that's why it stillnlooks great nowadays.

You have an awesome and entertaining channel, keep it up :)

Damn I'm old - ZX Spectrum was our first machine & the 386DX was the first PC.

Wait...130k! wow! congratulation. keep on the good work.

Dude you put out good content. Keep up the good work.

I imagine games in the future to have stuff like individual sand grains, and polygon based leaves and such things. Probably a destructible world, like minecraft, but then with full 3d models rather than just individual cubes.

I love these types of videos, XD I was replaying Vice City on my PC right before I watched this, and I remember GTA 1 like it was yesterday.

Whoa! New video! And graphics! Yas!

Greg, some of the star wars clips used in the video are from the 1997 re-release. In '97 the film was re-released with some cgi clips added to make it closer to what Lucas originally intended. Just thought I would let you know! Great video btw! keep it up!

This video really makes me wonder how graphics will advance in the future, like he said at the end. I mean, you can only make a game so realistic before it's literally limited by realism itself

Great vid, man. Great channel. Keep it up.

With the current technologies that game engines can take advantage of, the only improvement I'm imagining will be in terms of lighting. (I'm not taking into account poly count and texture resolution as those are a given). In fact, if you take a look at how the technology has evolved these several years, the biggest improvement is in terms of lighting. There's been improvements in rendering techniques, speeding up draw calls, etc. but the biggest improvement is lighting, and will be lighting. We already have the capability to achieve a realistic render with higher polycounts, higher resolution textures, normal maps, specular maps, sub-surface scattering, and Physics Based Rendering.

My first PC game I played is Prince of Persia (DOS version) on my uncle's office PC, I was still 3 or 4th grader then. Since then I tried hard to memorize DOS command like DIR, CD, etc just to be able to play the games

I started with pong, didn't know there was an analog asteroid game, very interesting as usual ! Thanks again.

I love your videos! keep up the good work!

Plenty are missing like PC with turbo button, commodore 64, atari 260 and many more...man, I am old

Man, we have gone a long way from 200 years ago. I am excited for the 87 years I have left in this world.

Does your camera have manual mode? At least manual focus would be nice. Very interesting, great video :)

It will be great a more technical series of video divided by decade, F.E. explain 80's CGA EGA VGA in one, and 90's 3D and poly in another

Speaking of Quake, have you ever heard about the quick inverse square square root hack from Quake III? If you haven't, it's very interesting stuff.

had to watch. I feel old though, I still have my Intellivision, NES and SNES :D

i didn't knew that toy story cam in 1995 7years before my birth but still the graphics too this day look gr8

I still have my Nvidia 8800gts in my arcade PC. That card was amazing for the time 2007-2008 (could even play Crysis at decent settings.) But today it couldn't play modern games hardly at all, but a CPU from around that time can still hold pretty well today, something like the I7-920 which came out in 2008 still can work for gaming to this day. Graphics cards right now are still getting some good upgrades where CPU's aren't. I wonder if that trend will continue and when/if we will see GPU's start to level out.

I was late on the gaming scene. I got a gameboy when I was 12 (in 94). All my friends already had a snes and I had to go play at their houses. I finally caught up with a genesis and snes when I was probably 13. I remember waiting on the Nintendo 64 to be released in USA...-back then they were calling it the "Ultra 64" (pre-release). I didn't think the playstation would ever amount to much... I mean who ever would've thought sony would release a game system? Back then I thought they just made stereos and such.

Unreal did a nice job to show dynamic lights, vast spaces, DirectX and OpenGL features, and even some more advanced physics, I'd say it is a mark for hitting a generation of graphics after Quake. Just my thoughts though, but I haven't seen a game so immersive back at the time it was released.

When I bough my first 3Dfx Vodoo with 4MB buffer(lol) and loaded Unreal... just awesome!

Coming in with the new 2016 SuperFX Chip!

I Remembered the Top Gun guts and glory for gameboy.. oh man fun times!

Your earn my subscribe, keep up the good work dude. ✌🏻️

Cool, very cool, Greg !!!

wow you're only 21? respect man, I'm 19 and my best friend and myself are planning to make our own youtube channel soon too

Hey Greg, can you do a video on WHY smaller CPU architectures result in better power efficiency?

That was an Amiga 500, not a 1000.. And Babylon 5 (TV Series) was originally done on Amiga-based "video toasters" - if you're talking about CGI ;)

Hey I love your videos man very interesting and gets to the point. One question tho... what is your wallpaper? I really like it :)

You assume computer technology will continue to advance at the same rate it did in the 1990s, which it isn't, it has slowed down drastically and the laws of physics are beginning to interfere and prevent silicon-based technology from becoming any more powerful.

YOU'RE ONLY 21!? WHOA BRUH! I'M 21. I thought you were like 29-30, but like a handsome 29-30. (No homo)

I remember playing combat on the atari 2600 when it was new, I'm feeling old right now :(

I am surprised you didn't mention the Matrix series when talking about the movies but I do understand there are alot to cover lol

Miniaturization is used in so many modern technologies. There is not really anything new, everything is just getting smaller so there is always more information.

I think you forgot the popup about you deconstructing the PS. Interesting vid tho, lookign forward to games in the future.

Can't wait till 20k is the new 1080p

I'm going to point out that back in 2011/2012 I thought that Deus Ex Human Revolution and Skyrim on the 360 were some of the best looking games around. Simply compare the second Deus Ex with the 3rd one, in only 5 years the graphically fidelity jumped enormously. We are getting into damn near photo-realistic looking games(look at Battlefield 1 or Battlefront's maps in 4K, eerily close, but character models still aren't quite there yet). I think we still have a way to go for it to be common-place, but I could easily see us getting real-looking graphics in the next 5-10 years, then hopefully we move on to AI and making games as close to reality as we can in other ways.

I dont know how many gamers today take AA for granted, the consoles don't really use much of it(anymore?). But yeah I remember playing dos games from the early 90's, the doom clones were fun, but man we've come a way in terms of looks. But wolf 3d will ways have a special place in my heart.

Very informative , whole lotta thanks for the post tbh

Greg, have you published any videos on liquid cooling an gaming console?

You're only 21? Wow! You're intelligent AF.

I remember the old 8 Bit computers... now that was graphics!

I realize you are trying to keep the video brief, but I would suggest explaining the significance behind why a game such as quake was so revolutionary rather than just stating that it changed the industry. Maybe a short series would be better? I think people are interested in this topic, but deeper than surface level is where it becomes much more interesting.

I remember FF: The Spirits Within when it came out and thinking "Oh wow these people look just like real life" now I look back at it and wonder how I ever thought that! It's crazy how our minds an imagination fool us into thinking graphics are better than they are, so long as they are the best graphics we've seen.

Anyone remember how revolutionary ocarina of time was? Ahhh classic

I used to play the NES with a black and white TV. That is the oldest computer graphics I've personally seen.

Speaking of cutting edge, can you do a comparison of a top end CPU from 2006 or later and compare it to your i7