A bit off topic to boxing but some of us were waxing poetic about UO and how great it was.

We hit upon the topic of 3d rendering and how far it has come.

Now.... back 10 years ago, this is what we had.



Ultima Online. The pinnacle of MMORPGS 10 years ago.

Then we moved to a 3d world: EverQuest



I can't say that was amazingly better but all of a sudden we were 3d.

Ok so now we were 3d. But everything was..... still .... well... basic.

But doing some research recently, I had no idea how amazingly far things had come.

This apparently (!) is the FOURTH year Playboy has done their "girls of gaming" feature.



Now, those are professional renders. Ok sure. Nice. But how accessible is that to the average person? That level of detail?



Turns out, with newer software and some time rendering.... pretty darn accessible.

I mean these are not PHOTO QUALITY enders but they look like drawings!



Now... WoW will maintain their current graphical requirements. They are NOT going for photorealism. Which caused some people to complain that the game looked "cartoony" upon release. Well, it kind of is. They don't want to go for photorealism. Why? Graphic cards can't handle that. You don't get 9+ Million subs with a requirement for CUTTING EDGE $3000 computers (*looks at Vanguard*).

I guess my point is that I had absolutely no idea that CG art had come this far in a fairly short time period.

And yes, it was really hard to find SFW images for you guys. Consider yourself lucky (or unlucky considering on your perspective).