Re: CRAP Poll: Does The Tech Still Impress?

On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:09:24 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Does the technology in games impress you anymore?

Yes. I got a 1000 nit HDR monitor and I was very impressed by the
results. Like "Wow, why didn't I do this years ago?" Games are starting
to take full advantage of it. It is amazing.

G-Sync is also (an albeit older) wow. Much more responsive to control
without Vsync. Some weird flicker with static images, but I fixed that by
getting a higher refresh monitor and not running it full refresh*.

Talos Principle 2 absolutely floored me with it's beauty and
photorealism. Then I got the HDR monitor, and I was giddy.

Polygons keep polygoning, and it's always rounder and better. NBD.

Ray tracing is a "meh," but it still allows for some noticeably cool
effects from time to time. Like SM3.0 level of mildly cool**. A few
parlor tricks here and there. Not breathtaking at all.

So a resounding "Yes." The tech still does advance, and it definitely
still does impress. Some things less than others.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten


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*  The trick to kill G-Sync flicker on a 144Hz monitor is to custom set
it to 143Hz. Now I have a 240Hz monitor and run it at 144Hz.

** I was not terribly impressed with SM3.0 even though it was a basic
quality-of-life improvement. OTOH, pixel shaders in general were a BFD. I
can still remember the water *looking like water* in Morrowind. But
Bioshock was an obvious tech demo for SM3.0 (DX 9.0c), and it wasn't much
better looking than the results from SM2.0b (DX 9.0b) in Doom 3. I had to
buy a new card eventually, because SM2.0b was dropped entirely, but it
could wait and it did. Essentially, it was an excuse to deprecate a bunch
of perfectly workable hardware, just like RTX is trying to do.

I don't buy into hype. I certainly don't buy 1st gen products when
something like this happens. I wait for standards to mature. 1st gens are
weak tech demos rather than working products. The 20xx series can do
stuff like Quake ][ RTX. Cyberpunk's graphics were deliberately dumbed
down to accommodate 30xx RTX performance. Ugh. Free me of that nonsense.
I'm not an early adopter.