[HN Gopher] Flight Simulator gave birth to 3D video-game graphics
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Flight Simulator gave birth to 3D video-game graphics
Author : rbanffy
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-02-27 11:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| bitwize wrote:
| It's typical Gatesian tackiness to compare the first heavier-
| than-air flight to the Web. Much as the Web has changed things,
| flight was a much more profound change. It made the world more
| physically connected, completely upended warfare, and fulfilled a
| dream held by humans for millennia.
| alex_sf wrote:
| All three of your examples also apply to the internet.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Indeed, but making the world more connected through flight
| made us believe that giving voice to everyone with the
| internet was actually a good idea.
| bitL wrote:
| Since the VC-backed beginning of "social", Internet became a
| shared cesspool with gamed interactions. Not really a
| fulfillment of a dream of the majority of humanity.
| alex_sf wrote:
| That's not fair at all. Unless you're prepared to say that,
| given the opportunity, you would turn the internet off,
| this is just rhetoric.
| bitL wrote:
| Dunno, I remember early Internet; I think we will see it
| getting in a much worse shape with ChatGPT/Stable
| diffusion-like tech deployed at scale. Pointless
| interaction with bots all the time on bot-generated
| websites with viewers being gamified to spend as much
| money/attention as possible, original human-made content
| disappearing everywhere.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I used to play the first version of subLogic's T80-FS1 flight sim
| on my TRS-80 clone.
|
| That is all I came here to say.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| I always wondered how it worked. It seems to me that with its
| limited hardware, it can only display ground features, not
| whole 3D surroundings. Am I completely wrong? Is it something
| like this?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZYSY1fSQk
| geocrasher wrote:
| I've been playing MSFS since Flight Simulator 4, on a 286. The
| latest incarnation is nothing short of incredible, especially
| compared to how good early versions were for their time. What
| they've done with the latest version blows me away every time I
| play.
| geff82 wrote:
| I have only one grief with (all) PC Flight Simulators: the
| feeling on landing. As a private pilot, I find that takeoff and
| flight is actually quite well simulated, but not the landing.
| In a real small plane, the controls begin to feel wobbly, you
| feel the floating on the cushion of air, you feel the wind: all
| totally different in the simulation. I wonder how they could
| get it right.
| bitL wrote:
| For some reason when using VR I feel like MSFS 2020 landing
| is realistic that I get the ground effect keeping me afloat
| longer; wind sometimes pushes me to a side as well. I used to
| fly sailplanes which were extremely sensitive to these things
| and that feeling is there again in VR.
| smoldesu wrote:
| BeamNG has some interesting ideas for future simulators to
| take note of: https://youtu.be/ZBwGK2zuNOk
|
| It's a "worst case scenario" idea for driving simulation,
| where each piece can be deformed and tracked to implement
| various features. As a result, the driving feels more like a
| collection of pieces rather than one mesh with consistent
| acceleration. It's subtle during regular gameplay, but
| emerges excellently in high-stress scenarios like hard
| corners or crashes.
|
| Hopefully the next frontier in simulation titles is
| distilling these simulation ideas into mechanics that are
| both fun and accurate. It feels like the tech is there, but
| the will to design a realtime physics-based flying simulator
| isn't.
| rbanffy wrote:
| My first one was Sublogic's FS3 (same software, but Microsoft
| sold it for PCs and Sublogic sold it to other platforms). When
| I realized I could use Sublogic's Jet with the FS3 disk for
| scenario, I quit the little Cessna and started to fly an F-18
| all over the place.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I played MSFS on System 7 Apple Mac Performa back in 1992 or so.
| It was the first game I ever played with 3D graphics that I can
| remember so I'm keen to agree with the article. Wolfenstein 3D
| was actually 2.5D but both of them were probably equally
| responsible for 3D real-time graphics today. I say real-time
| because Pixar has been doing 3D since the 80s with SGI and there
| was a wireframe 3D game called Elite that was popular. Without
| filling in the polygons though they missed being the grandfather
| of it all.
|
| *edit* I found the version, version 4, here:
| https://www.mobygames.com/game/2103/microsoft-flight-simulat...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| IMHO the '3D craze' only really started with Doom (even thought
| that isn't 3D either - but it fools the player well enough).
| Watching a 5 fps 'slide show' is only so impressive, even when
| it's fully 3D rendered, but playing Doom fullscreen, 'per-pixel
| textured' at 35fps was a frigging psychedelic experience at the
| time.
|
| ...my first 3D games were actually on the Amiga, Damocles,
| Tower of Babel, Falcon, Flight of the Intruder(!), Birds of
| Prey, Gunship, all great games, but nothing compared to Doom.
| krmblg wrote:
| I just realized that "3D graphics/flight sim" was kind of a
| hardware/tech benchmark back then (prior to the (PC) demo scene).
|
| Iirc my first MSFS was either 1.0 or 2.0 (?) and I played a lot
| of subsequent titles that featured some more or less
| sophisticated 3D tech (Lightspeed, Microprose titles like e.g.
| F-117A etc, Gunship 2000, Strike Commander, Falcon (3.0?), Wing
| Commander, Comanche ("whoa, Voxels!")..
|
| It was sure enough to save up for a CH Flightstick Pro and/or
| that Thrustmaster Stick "with the coolie hat".
|
| But the first title that felt truly immersive in terms of 3D
| (albeit confusing at times) was Descent.
|
| So I'd also assume this type of games caused some niche
| industries to flourish (both hardware and "consumer-grade
| military sim" software companies.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Wow, yeah Descent was super impressive at the time
| tstrimple wrote:
| Interestingly I've always thought that Elite was the first game
| with 3d graphics, but the timeline doesn't seem to agree. Elite
| was developed in 1982 (published in 1984), while MSFS was
| developed in 1976. I wonder why Elite is still considered by many
| to be the first game with 3d graphics.
|
| https://www.frontier.co.uk/our-games/our-gameography/elite
|
| > "Elite set many firsts, and was the first genuine 3D game on
| home computers. Even many years after its release it is fondly
| remembered. For example "Probably the best computer game ever"
| (The Times, December 1988). It went on to sell around 1,000,000
| units, and is popular still, having appeared on most popular
| formats."
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Probably because home computers like the C64 were _a lot_ more
| popular (and cheaper) than boring "office PCs" in the 80's (at
| least in Europe, don't know how it was in the US).
| layer8 wrote:
| Your quote says "on home computers". IBM PCs, on which MSFS ran
| on, were not considered home computers [0]. In the 1990s, home
| computers were finally displaced by the PC (and by consoles)
| for gaming, and the PC effectively took over the role that home
| computers used to serve. But the term "home computer" wasn't
| used any more, at least partly because PCs were always also
| business computers.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer
| tverbeure wrote:
| I don't think I've spent more hours on a single game than Elite
| on a Commodore 64. Back in the day, it wasn't clear what were
| the requirements to level up your rank. I never made it past
| Deadly, which IIRC was the last level before Elite.
|
| I later played it on a 286-based PC, and made Elite level in a
| few days, which was a huge disappointment. It was supposed to
| be an incredibly achievement to make it that far!
|
| Turns out that leveling up was based entirely on the number of
| ships you shot down. They probably just dialed it down for the
| PC?
|
| Either way, it was a fantastic game.
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