Arcade Machines look WEIRD in Slow Mo - The Slow Mo Guys 

Dan’s underground tunnel was reported to have made it all the way to directly underneath Austin the last time we heard. When we went over to it to check for potential emergence holes, it became clear that he either made a wrong turn or had some unfinished business to attend to first, as his tunnel continued under Texas towards the city of Las Vegas. Seems as though he’ll potentially work his way back down the tunnel he dug after he’s finished at the roulette table.

I so appreciate you replaying the first slow-mo but with the image being persistent. Immediately satisfied the thought as it arised.

Persistence of vision is awesome

It's actually crazy to me that this kind of ultra fast technology existed 40 years ago

Good timing to mention Mat/Techmoan. His video today is a "scope clock" with vector graphics on an oscilloscope tube.

Really cool. I was always so impressed by how futuristic the HUDs in 80s fighter jets are. This really shows how much they could do with relatively weak computers back then.

5:25 is one of the funniest moments I've seen on RU-vid just because of all the other arcade cabinets being normal and then Tempest just doing it's own thing

I love how the younger viewers are impressed that this was done with "ancient", 40 year old technology, but don't realize that people were drawing shapes, text, and images on oscilloscopes (a vector graphic CRT) a century ago - right around the turn of the 1900s. To the younger generation's credit, though, it has been game graphics that has driven the advancement of monitor and display technology.

Just thinking about how programmer back then coded something like this with such a limited resources gave me a chill.

"I'm feeling like Techmoan, but without the Mancunian charm". It's nice to see how Gav kind of looks up to Mat as a YT celebrity, even if this channel has 12 times as many subscribers.

Went to an arcade and played asteroids and was amazed at how crisp and nice looking the display looked, it's cool finding out how it works and why its so distinctly different than other types of displays. Great video as always!

After seeing your previous videos on various screens, this completely blew my mind. It's so different! I opened this video thinking "well how different can it possibly be", and you sure showed me. Thank you for continuing to point Phantoms at everyday items, the results are so fascinating. PS: Nice to see a few seconds of Dan in the sponsorship 😂

“Hello I’m Gav.” *…* It just ain’t the same 😔

It was such a cool feeling going to these arcades in the 80 with all the sounds and being so dark so you could see the screens plus all the people. Too bad most people will never know it. Good video.

I've always adored vector displays. Any time I'm at an arcade I'm drawn to any game using them with their intense contrast and vibrancy.

Finally a good explanation how Vector graphics works. You can talk all about it, but this just SHOWS what happens! So this is of great educational/explanatory value. Thanks Gav!

Nice to see Techmoan mentioned. 😁🤓

I had always wondered why screens flashed when they were recorded, and Gavin answered that. Ever since it just gets more and more interesting with all the different ways technology brings visuals to our eyes.

4:33 - My mind is absolutely blown away. I can't believe this is a way that developers used to use this as a way of displaying information on a screen! SUPER COOL. Thank you for this, Gav! 😁

When I was a kid, I put many quarters into Tempest and Battle Zone. Good times....

In the 80's "Tempest" was my best game. I held the whole "High Score" list on three different machines at one time, LOL.

My dad used to have the old cocktail table version of tempest. Loved playing it growing up, really cool to see a little bit more of how it worked.

I don't know the chances of it happening, but if you've ever heard of the channel Retro Game Mechanics Explained, he's done a deep dive into the programming and mechanics behind Atari's Quadrascan vector based arcade games about 10 months ago, and it's very interesting, it would be so cool to see a collaboration between you two on it, or related topics. When you are able to go so deep in understanding what each line of programming does, and then immediately go see it in action in slow motion, that is the coolest thing in my opinion. Here's the video he made on Atari Quadrascan: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-smStEPSRKBs.html and here's a link to his channel if you want to check it out, he does a lot more really cool topics, even going so far as to manually decompress a Pokemon sprite by hand during a livestream for charity: ru-vid.com

This was really cool. Especially since Tempest, Battle Zone, and Star Wars were 3 of my favorite arcade games in the early 80s. I really dug the vector graphics.

I've never seen graphics like this before. That Star Wars game an Tempest look like a lot of fun

This is somehow way more impressive to me than modern screens

There’s another downside in that the more stuff you had on the screen, the longer it took to draw a frame. Eventually, it gets to the point that there isn’t time to draw everything.

I love that out with all the advancements in display technology since the CRT TV, it's still basically the same thing. The images have gotten sharper, the animations have gotten smoother, but it's still a line tracing down the screen too fast for the eye to follow.

Growing up, I was always fascinated with vector-based graphics and absolutely loved games like Battle Zone, Star Wars, and Tempest, precisely because they were so different than the other sprite-based games of the day. Awesome presentation of the tech!

And vector was 80's technology. Imagine what we could do now.

Another key point about vector displays is they can change the brightness by changing how slowly they draw a line or stay on a dot. The bullets in Asteroids are brighter than anything on a raster display because it keeps the beam on one spot for longer.

I'll keep using this joke Somewhere: "And I'm Dan" Dan: "NOT AGAIN"

I really miss Dan

I always knew there was something different about the display on these type of games. Thanks for the info Gav 👍👍

Just wanna say how incredible Gav is for keeping this channel going so strongly! We all miss Dan a tonne and I can't wait for him to be back, but Gav, you're amazing!

Great u start with Tempest! I’m 62 now n in 81 was finishing my undergrad in psychology. One of my last courses was the psychologiy of perception. I liked Missle Command n then when it came out, Tempest. I used to half-kid my friends that most likely the designers were hip enough to structure the flicker rate to such a degree to stimulate our eyes’ Rods n Cones enough to ensure we would become “addicted” to play again. 😄 it was a great era

I am amazed at the speed all of this happens. Unfathomable. Way more impressive to me than refreshing a "simple" grid of dots.

Back in the early 80's I had a full size Tempest game complete with coin chutes. I had a side job repairing these machines and always favored X-Y displays over raster scan. Another good one is Major Havoc.

Oscillofun is this brought to life with current technology. Also you can get the slow motion display simply by varying the readout rate for your raster display, obviating the need for the slow motion camera, plus the modern versions can sort of do flood filling, by drawing multiple lines in an area, to fill it in, and letting the eye integrate the lines into a solid block.

I worked in the field of protein crystallography in 1980's and beyond and wrote software that had to draw complex views of data. The 1980's used the Evans and Sutherland computers which were vector graphics engines, and you could only draw a number of lines before you brain could see the flicker of the image. The computer code draw lines, and these were drawn exactly in order in the computer code, and you had to limit the number you drew. All code was "wire-frame", just like this. We also worked on the earliest version of stereo in the 1990's where the monitor was over clocked to double its refresh rate (and not interlaced), then you drew the left/right scene in the bottom and top of the view - which would then wrap round when you over-ran the monitor to 100Hz. (Europe), to create the stereo. We drew 2 dots on the screen which used 2 sensors to hand made LCD glasses that would alternate flash, so the eyes would see the alternate scenes. SGI computers replaced these vector machines with the first "high-performance" raster graphics in the 1990 - and these cost from 100,000 to some 500,000 $/£ each and some the size of a small desk with an 18 inch cooling fan.

I've always loved vector graphics.

Well this shines a new light on arcade games!

never knew these type of games existed in 1981. I thought it would be really flat and dull looking stuff but this is gorgeous.

I always loved vector screens. It just has these incredible contrast and the lines were as bright as a laser. Which after seeing how it works, its essentially the same theory for creating an image with a laser

This is not only very cool to watch but very interesting to learn about. Gav's a great teacher lol

Nice Techmoan shoutout. Love that guy!

I'm glad you're going down the rabbithole of "things right in front of us;" it's so fascinating to see everything we see on a daily basis be shown as what it truly is.

My mate dan doesn't find those flashing lights horrendous. He loves em so much, he's doing a special weird dance on the floor.

Tempest is hypnotizing, even on a 50hz camera

Fascinating. Love this channel.

1:30 some older computer monitors (the green and amber ones) and stuff like old radar displays used "high-persistence" phosphors that kept glowing for quite a bit longer, so you would have something like a full picture on screen at once (though the most recently scanned bits would be brighter than the rest). While they were great for text, they were no good for high-motion TV or video games... like an old LCD they would get blurry and ghosty if the picture changed too fast.

Never stop doing what you do, everything is quality and simply amazing to see.

Fascinating. I never knew there were vector displays, assuming all screens refreshed line by line. Thank you for this! Also, the story of Dan the Subocean Traveller is hilarious, as always.

Hi Gav, fantastic video as always. Love to see how our eyes are fooled by display technology. Would you ever consider pointing the Phantom at a DLP projector? It would be incredible to see the DMD device and colour wheel working together. With new faux 4K system, the DMD is flashed multiple times tin increase the perceived resolution.

This explains why those types of graphics displays were better at depth. Moving through a 3D space because of scalability.

This Display technology reminds me of show-lasers used for lasershows. They can also only display lines. But instead of an electron beam, they unse a combined rgb laserbeam and e very high speed mirror system.

You can see exactly the same effect by actually drawing the images on the CRT but slower - osci-render which is a project I've been working on lets you render vector graphics on a CRT oscilloscope, just like this, and it has a frequency control which lets you reduce the frequency well below 1Hz, creating the same frame-tracing effect you see in slow motion :)

I was a CRT tester a few years ago and it's really cool to see these in slow mo. The science that goes into producing these even today is impressive and pretty labor intensive depending the kind of tube it is. Size, how many guns are in it, type of coatings, how the coatings are applied, the housing (shield), how the wiring is setup. Can get complicated quick.

This filled in a void i had in my head for years as to how vector graphics worked

3:48 This wound be a sick screen saver.

That's a lot of neck hair xD

Tempest… now I feel old. I actually remember when that game was still in arcades. Besides Asteroids, another well known vector graphics game from that era was Omega Race. And let us not forget the Vectrex game console.

One fact you didn't talk about is that the time the screen needs to take to draw an image on vectographs depends on how many elements currently are renderered unless on a traditional CRT which scanne from top to bottom. You can actually see the frames taking longer and shorter time to draw in the footage. Sometimes the screen turns black at faster intervals as at other times. That's also exactly why everything on a vectograph screen tends to be hollow bc if you would fill everything out, the time to draw 1frame would take too long.

I haven’t watched you dudes in forever! I remember when you two dudes were just in ur backyard filming!

I love vector based graphics, my logo is a svg. Infinitely scalable 😁 When will you compare all the other types of screens? This was definitely cool to watch!

Tempest is my favorite childhood arcade game.. thank you

Thanks, loved seeing this in slo Mo. I grew up pumping coins into Battle Zone and Star Wars. I played Star Wars again a few years back and I was amazed how much muscle memory came back.

Saw an "unfortunate" comment so I just gotta say, even without Dan these videos are still great! You do an awesome job despite the lack of Dan. I think we all miss him in these videos but, until you two can properly meet up we'll all still enjoy the slow mo guy/s :)

To be honest CRT displays amaze me more than any other technology we have today

I love this mini story about Dan’s travels in the pinned comments every video!

Very clear demonstration of vector displays! Thank you!

If anyone is curious about how this works from a technical level, Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a video on the Atari Quadrascan and it's really interesting to see how it works and how different is from traditional rasterized game rendering.

Fun fact for those that wish to understand video editing- That part where he showed all the brightest pixels line by line?, it was done one singular frame at a time, meaning he cut a picture and layered it for every single led. Now- UNDERSTAND WHY EDITORS ARE UNDERATED?

I loved Battle Zone and Star Wars when I was a kid at the arcade. Seeing them here brought back fun memories.

I worked on the head-up display for the Harrier aircraft. It was a vector display projected onto a transparent mirror. The CRT had a 1" diameter screen with a spot size of .001" and was incredibly bright. It had to be visible when flying (almost) into the sun.

I miss you and Dan! Can't wait for another RU-vid sponsored run. I know RU-vid Red is dead, but we need an 8 episode seasons/series(8 weeks), every 6 months. Ill pay the channel $20 a year for that! SOOOOO WORTH IT!

#BringBackDANtheMAN

Tempest was my absolute favorite game back in the 80s. My sister and I would waste many quarters at our local arcade playing this. So nice to see it, especially in slow mo! Thanks for the memories .

the old "take it away me" "thanks, me" bit gets me every time 😆

Where do you guys think Dan's tunnel is at by now?

This makes me want to see a Vectrex working in slow mo (although it's probably very similar I suppose)

That's amazing! Love it!

It's always good to see these guys

When covids over can slow mo guys be dan with andrew

I miss Dan I haven't seen him for a while, he was one of the Slow Mo Guys and now this channel should be named, The Slow Mo Guy

Thank you so much for showing Tempest. This is by far my favorite game. I now have a greater appreciation for vector graphics. Well done!

I've been into retro arcade games for a long time and was always intrigued by the ingenuity of the developers of Tempest. It is so nice to actually see footage of what I only imagined for such a long time. On another note I would again suggest to take a look into FPV drones. The rotation of the props when they do sharp flips and rolls will probably make for an interesting video, crashes even more so.

did they ever make a hybrid display, one that used the vector for the objects and the scanning for the background?

I wonder if developers for vector graphics games had to consider how long each element on screen takes to draw, and if they had too much stuff that took too long to draw that it could bog down the TV and start to look like flickering to us. I wonder if that's why they couldn't just have the machine fill in the inside of shapes.

Wow that is mind boggling, thanks for showing this Gav, never would of thought something like this was going on.

I had no idea at the time that so many games we were playing were vector graphics, thanks for the enlightenment...I find this form of 'screen drawing' rather aesthetically pleasing. Incidentally, this form of graphics remind me of oscilloscope music...!

How is Dan’s tunnel going Gav?

How are the electrons from the electron gun "aimed" to form the vector lines? Is there a motor or is there a electrical way to precisely aim them like that?

As the proud owner of a full Tempest upright since 1991, all I can say is: Very neat! And also, turn the brightness down a bit else you'll damage that 40 year old monitor! :)

As someone who can't safely handle a flashing screen, I really appreciate that you lead with that when appropriate. So many channels don't give the warning until several minutes in after I've invested time I'll never get back, or worse, not at all.

I love the look of vector arcade games, it seemed so "high tech" at the time. My childhood dentist in the 80s actually had an Asteroids game in the waiting area that required no quarters! I was obsessed with it and it made checkups worthwhile. I'm curious if vector and scanline graphics could be combined on the CRT? Was there ever a game that perhaps alternated frames between a vector pass and a standard scanline pass? Seems like that could result in some cool graphic effects.

if you’re comfortable, it would be neat to have Dan “try outs” till he’s able to complete his underground tunnel ! you can even focus episodes on whoever you have on e.g. if meg helps you can do something with cosplay (¿) or you can tie micheal to a stick of dynamite etc. idk could be fun :)

An oscilloscope is basically a vector display as well. And people have made music that draws shapes on oscilloscopes. Or rather, the shapes are the music, which is crazy to think about because how can something be an image and sound at the same time?

One thing I've always liked about slowmo, is the idea that these things have been figured out at some point, yet it's taken until we had high frame capture rates to see how it works.

I miss Dan. I want the Slow Mo Guys not just a Slow Mo Guy.