Mmmm... maybe your timeline is not so clear.

The first time that 320x200 was used, it was a CGA video mode (1981?) with 4 colours. I think that maybe you're thinking about VGA mode with 256 colours. The same thing applies to 640x480: that was a 16 colours VGA mode (but the first game I remember that used it was Syndicate), but I guess you're thinking about SVGA modes at 256 or more colours (maybe even 3D accelerated modes, like Voodoo).

Later modes (up to 1024x768?) could be used (at 256 colours, with no acceleration) on build games (Duke Nukem 3D), but accelerated 3D modes (at full 30 fps) needed more modern computers.

It is not clear to me at all since I didn't start PC gaming until '98. Looking for folks to fill in the year range for each resolution.

I do understand that 320x200 was used for a long time and covered CGA, EGA and VGA -- and that it wasn't the only resolution for those modes.

I remember 2560x1600 displays being available as early as 2004, in the form of Apple's Cinema display. IIRC, Dell came out with their 2560x1600 panel a year later, in 2005.

I also remember Samsung advertising a 1920x1200 LCD monitor way, way back in 2001. Sony probably would've had their 1200p widescreen CRT available around that time as well.

Edit:

infiniteclouds wrote:

I'm less interested in when the first displays of that resolution were produced than I am what years the resolutions were appearing as an option in games and could realistically be utilized by the hardware.

Welp, you can safely ignore me. I obviously can't read. 😊

Mainstream widescreen implementation was pretty early on in the 2000s like 2000-2002. Some examples would be ati's 7000-8000 series and the original microsoft xbox supporting 1080 displays.

I can see where your coming from, kinda interesting topic.

Got our first PC in early 95 so just towards end of DOS gaming days.
And while a few did, majority did not support anything above 800x600 so would say mainstream support of 1024x768 after Win95 sometime.
1280x1024 would be mainstream whenever 17" TFT's also became mainstream (Like you I held onto my CRT longer then most so not sure exactly when this would be)
I'm surprised some how early games supported widescreen, some early-mid 2000's games like Need for Speed 3, but wouldn't say it was mainstream yet.

emosun wrote:

Mainstream widescreen implementation was pretty early on in the 2000s like 2000-2002. Some examples would be ati's 7000-8000 series and the original microsoft xbox supporting 1080 displays.

while there was support for 16:9 on the PS2-GC-Xbox era, the main format was still clearly 4:3, you still had often games that didn't support 16:9, had stretched UI and so on, Widescreen really became the norm after 2005 I think, yet 5:4 monitors were still popular until around 2007.

Some 90's console games had a 16:9 wide mode (for wide screens, not letterboxed 4:3). Goldeneye in particular, and even Ghost in the Shell

So, this would some items on the timeline:

- 320x200 (strict): IBM PC born with this resolution (with 4 colours), this was a mode included on the CGA video card. Even those people with Hercules monochrome cards could play CGA games via emulators, so I'd put this at the same year the IBM PC was born.

- 320x200 (256 colours): IBM launched the VGA card on 1987, and by that time 286 processors were not uncommon. I remember playing some games (Wing Commander I, Elf, 4D Stunts) that supported 256 colours on an Olivetti PCS86, so PCs from that time did not have any problem to run that video mode. OK, they were 2D (or 3D flat polygons) games, but everybody knows what are the minimum requirements for textured (Wolf 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D) games.

- 320x200 (3D): I don't remember playing any 3D accelerated game at this resolution... even the crappiest 3D accelerator cards could do 640x480 (with various grades of success), so this item is not really needed.

- 640x480 (strict): The first game I remember using this resolution was Syndicate (Bullfrog), launched in 1993. It ran on low 486 systems, that were common by that time.

- 640x480 (256 colours): Although Duke Nukem 3D and Terminal Velocity needed (almost) a Pentium to be fully playable at this resolution, other games (Crusader: No Remorse, Fallen Haven, King Quest VI, Sim City) could run in my 486 DX2/66 that by 1995 were everywhere (but note that, except Crusader, those games are adventures/strategy). I remember playing Tie Fighter on DOS at high resolution, but I don't remember if I played it on my 486 or my Pentium II.

- 640x480 (3D): As I said before, even the crappiest 3D accelerators supported this resolution. I guess that 1998 or 1999 was the year.

From there, everything seems to get blurry. Why? Because although resolutions was still important, the effects supported began to be as important. At the same time my Voodoo 3 played most games at 800x600 happily, there was games (GTA3) that were completely unplayable. Other examples: At the time some cards could play most games at 1024x760, new games began to demand Pixel Shader supports rendering that cards slow as a snails (if they could play that games at all).

infiniteclouds wrote:

could realistically be utilized by the hardware.

Well, depends on what is realistic. I assume it is that which stresses the hardware to the point of maintaining perfect balance between visual fidelity and speed.

Judging from my experience, the Voodoo 2 in 1998 sits very comfortably with 640x480x16. The original Geforce in 1999 goes to either 800x600x16 or 640x480x32 before it drops fast, and the DDR version takes this up a notch with 1024x768x16 and 800x600x32. The Radeon in 2000 is very capable of handling high resolutions and bit depths, but it seems like 1024x768x32 became 'enough' years to come, as nearly all monitors designated this as their native resolutions in their EDIDs.
Of course, the hardware is more than capable of going beyond, but it is just not the 'smart' thing to do.

As for appearing in games at all, the Quake games showcase a steady increase over the years. Q1 had 1280x1024, Q2 had 1600x1200, Q3 had 2048x1536.

silikone wrote:

Well, depends on what is realistic. I assume it is that which stresses the hardware to the point of maintaining perfect balance between visual fidelity and speed.

Exactly this. Your mention of Quake below is a perfect example. Yes, it could go up to 1280x1024 but running a benchmark @ that resolution on my S939 AMD 4000+ pushes 41FPS and we've already lost ISA sound card support well before that.

Judging from my experience, the Voodoo 2 in 1998 sits very comfortably with 640x480x16. The original Geforce in 1999 goes to either 800x600x16 or 640x480x32 before it drops fast, and the DDR version takes this up a notch with 1024x768x16 and 800x600x32. The Radeon in 2000 is very capable of handling high resolutions and bit depths, but it seems like 1024x768x32 became 'enough' years to come, as nearly all monitors designated this as their native resolutions in their EDIDs.
Of course, the hardware is more than capable of going beyond, but it is just not the 'smart' thing to do.

As for appearing in games at all, the Quake games showcase a steady increase over the years. Q1 had 1280x1024, Q2 had 1600x1200, Q3 had 2048x1536.

Your comparison of hardware (and the year) to resolutions and Zup's timeline is really what I was looking for. I do understand that expectations for framerates were very different than they are now but whether or not something was 'choppy' seemed to be well understood.

Thanks for sharing.

Some notable ones IIRC:

1990: Wonderland had a 800x600 option with a Paradise VGA core.

1991: Mahjongg had an interlaced 1024x768 on an IBM 8514 graphics card.

<insert all Moraff games here>

1989: SimCity in glorious 640x350x16 EGA
One of the rare occasions EGA didn't suck.