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My favourite vector graphics game back in the day was Starglider, no colour-filled areas.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/1203/starglider/screenshots/

Elite was another vector graphics space game, at least on ssome platforms.

I wouldn't call this "vector graphics". This is CPU-rendered polygonal 3D. Thousands of early 3D games on the PC look like that in the pre-accelerator times. Just search on Moby.

When I think of vector graphics, I think of 80s arcade machines with vector monitors like Battlezone, Asteroid, Star Wars etc.

What's the second screenshot you posted, cydvog? I don't recognize it.

i found this link

https://selectbutton.net/t/early-first-person … ased-games/3881

A lot of polygonal games

feda wrote on 2023-07-02, 23:06:

What's the second screenshot you posted, cydvog? I don't recognize it.

Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis

i like those flat shaded polygonal games, they remind me of some 16 bit games from the amiga/st and early DOS era. there is something clean and other worldly about them

they are kind of the forerunner to the lifelike graphics of unreal 5 engine demos though, a few extra polygons and shadings and its there ! 😀

is there any other list of those polygonal games out there

Yeah, lots and lots of games like this in the late 1980s and 90s.

I remember people raving about Driller/Space Station Oblivion when it came out. It was very impressive - if you didn't mind a 1-2 fps framerate.

gerry wrote on 2023-07-03, 10:26:

they are kind of the forerunner to the lifelike graphics of unreal 5 engine demos though, a few extra polygons and shadings and its there ! 😀

Yea, in those early days I would never have thought that the low-poly, slow 3D games would ever reach any reasonable level of speed and realism, unlike the 2D arcade game stuff.
But we've come so far. In the mid-90s we'd already have fast arcade-paced 2.5D textured games like Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM, and by the early 2000s it became obvious that 3D acceleration would indeed make full 3D games fast and realistic eventually. And here we are today.

Two I remember, were Battle Cars for the Amiga, not sure if there was a PC version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4yFrdryl0k and ThunderStrike

Not so retro was an homage to Battlezone etc that was javascript I think, 3D Tank Hunter I think it was called by Ben Librojo, I liked playing that online a lot, even if it had the browser based suckage to contend with. It's very hard to find a working version of that now. I had tried self hosting it a number of years back but couldn't get it working for some reason. (In theory it's here but links are broken http://www.arcadepod.com/games/details.php?id=1947 )

Edit: More info and possible way to play on this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n4wV0hildw

cydvog wrote on 2023-07-02, 19:02:

Hi , i like graphics games like " the killing cloud " but im not sure these games named " vector " i m curious is there any games out there like? Here is example pic

Hi, are you into the atmosphere of these games?
If so, please have a look at: Real reason why old computer-generated virtual worlds are so fascinating

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_space_(aesthetic)

Edit:

feda wrote on 2023-07-02, 23:06:

I wouldn't call this "vector graphics". This is CPU-rendered polygonal 3D. Thousands of early 3D games on the PC look like that in the pre-accelerator times. Just search on Moby.

When I think of vector graphics, I think of 80s arcade machines with vector monitors like Battlezone, Asteroid, Star Wars etc.

What's the second screenshot you posted, cydvog? I don't recognize it.

Hm. I think "vector graphics" is fine. That's how I understood the term since forever.
I always thought of it as a generic term for everything using X/Y/Z axes, in contrast to flat bitmap graphics.

What you're referring to in particular seems to be "wire frame" graphics.
As opposed to "shaded polygon" graphics, "flat-shaded" graphics or "gouraud shaded" graphics.
That's what StarWing/StarFox used on SNES, for example.

Those liminal space backrooms look like a really useful space to store my old computers n stuff.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-07-03, 19:07:

Hm. I think "vector graphics" is fine. That's how I understood the term since forever.

You can call it that if you wish, but it would be incorrect.
There's a difference between rasterization vs vector graphics. The games OP is talking about do the former.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-07-03, 19:07:

What you're referring to in particular seems to be "wire frame" graphics.

No, I'm referring to arcade machines that display vector graphics on vector monitors.

What the OP is talking about is

"shaded polygon" graphics, "flat-shaded" graphics or "gouraud shaded" graphics.

Not really vector graphics.

In the 80s and early 90s, it was common to refer to any kind of 3D graphics as 'vector graphics'. If you look at demoscene prods from that era, especially on Amiga, it's full of references to 'vectors', meaning rasterized lines and polygons.

feda wrote on 2023-07-03, 20:38:

You can call it that if you wish, but it would be incorrect. There's a difference between rasterization vs vector graphics. The […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2023-07-03, 19:07:

Hm. I think "vector graphics" is fine. That's how I understood the term since forever.

You can call it that if you wish, but it would be incorrect.
There's a difference between rasterization vs vector graphics. The games OP is talking about do the former.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-07-03, 19:07:

What you're referring to in particular seems to be "wire frame" graphics.

No, I'm referring to arcade machines that display vector graphics on vector monitors.

What the OP is talking about is

"shaded polygon" graphics, "flat-shaded" graphics or "gouraud shaded" graphics.

Not really vector graphics.

Ah, now I understand! I'm afraid there's a misunderstanding then, maybe due to us being different generations.
Scali has described it very well, I think. cydvog and me were thinking of the art style, rather than the graphics generation.
What you're referring to is the physical side, how the electron beam directly draws the x/y lines on the phosphor screen.
Like a Vectrex game console or an oscilloscope would do. That makes sense, yes. 😀 👍
- Interestingly, an oscilloscope can also be made work as video monitor by using the Z-axis input. I think there was a YT video about that.

'Vector' doesn't necessarily refer to a 'vector display' of course.
3D transformations are also done with matrix and vector calculations (and a transformation matrix is basically just a collection of vectors, one for each base axis).
'Vector graphics' can also refer to images that are stored as vectors and related shapes, rather than as pixels. Such as in Postscript, SVG and similar.
3D graphics are usually also stored in this way (lines, polygons etc), rather than as pixels, of course. So in that sense they are also 'vector graphics'.

Yes, that. Though in this sense procedurally drawn isometric with no bitmaps or textures.

Edit: I guess that covers a lot of early flight sims, Microprose Formula 1 GP, Elite, Elite plus, etc.

I was quite impressed by the Superscape Interactive Demonstration when I downloaded it from a BBS! I think that was the first time I got to walk around a 3D environment, and the next time would have been Wolfenstein 3-D. I'd played Flight Simulator 4 before that, but being up close to the 3D objects and interacting with them was cool.

Actually I suppose I had played that monocrhome wireframe 3D dungeon game where you could only ever stand in the centre of a tile and could only face N, E, S or W - or maybe there were actually many such games - and I might have liked that at the time, but the above were a big upgrade!