Quote Originally Posted by beyond-tec
I've started with a C64, went over to a PC with 2 MhZ and a Turbo button, bought an 750 MB Hardisk for 500 DM, I've seen Prince of Persia in monochrome, bought myself a GFX-Card and played it in EGA Graphics and it was phantastic. OMG! Colors! :-)
Same here. Keep in mind that so many different parts of computer systems have continued to be improved as time passes. CPU power has increased in leaps and bounds. 2D graphics were off-loaded from the CPU to dedicated video cards, then 3D was as well, then PCs were given a dedicated channel for graphics (AGP then PCIe). Sound was off-loaded from the CPU. Hard disks have increased in size and speed and have larger data caches. Memory, etc...

Some of this isn't all that new. Anyone who remembers the C-64 and Amiga know about systems that run separate CPUs, video, and sound. But the leaps in pure processing power are hard to appreciate sometimes. The people who work on those 3D models that Xzin posted, as well as 3D animation... they know all about it. I can remember when simple 2D graphics filters took 40 minutes to apply to an image, or when a basic 3D render took a day or two. Now the filters are applied instantaneously most of the time, and the 3D renders run in hours, or only minutes.

I think Blizzard went the right route, not pushing the boundaries too hard in order to accomodate older hardware. But just compare it to the first Everquest and you can see the improvement. What I'm really wondering is how long it'll be before we can render environments where the trees are actually full of leaves instead of a few flat planes with textures. Stuff like that, it's really a sort of frill but the first time you see it you're knocked off your feet.

Lots of good stuff ahead. And some of it will be SFW! =D