VOGONS


First post, by Kahenraz

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Let's start a thread where we share anecdotes of our experiences in computing history where we felt that the future of technology had arrived.

I'll start with two examples that continue to resonate with me. They are both wholly obsolete but I still can't shake how grand they appear in my mind. Even though technology has moved on, the thoughts still remain.

* Iomega Jaz Drive

Removable 1GB disks, each with more space than I'll ever need. Did I mention that they're removable?

I no longer have any Jaz drives but I do keep a collection of 1GB MMC cards. They're each equivalent in capacity to an entire Jaz disk but are entirely solid state and smaller than a quarter. I'll never use them for anything now, but my mind is still blown every time I look at one.

* Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT

I can run everything at max settings and I'll never have to upgrade my video card again. It already supports pixel shaders 3.0, so there aren't any new features I'll need to worry about in the future. It's a single slot card (why would anyone want a dual slot graphics card anyways) and is AGP, because who cares about PCIe. AGP is plenty fast enough.

Reply 1 of 132, by Joseph_Joestar

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Seeing Morrowind use programmable shaders for the shiny water.

file.php?id=150038

Made me feel like PC game graphics were finally starting to look photorealistic.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2 of 132, by megatron-uk

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Doom. The combination of more realistic environments and positioned stereo audio (especially with headphones!). It changed the entire industry.

Fallout 3 when you first step outside the vault. The sunlight momentarily blinds you and then gradually fades to reveal a map that stretches for what seems like miles and miles. That was genuinely breathtaking.

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Reply 3 of 132, by myne

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3dmark fishing scene looked so real 24 years ago.

I built:
Convert old ASUS ASC boardviews to KICAD PCB!
Re: A comprehensive guide to install and play MechWarrior 2 on new versions on Windows.
Dos+Windows 3.11 auto-install iso template (for vmware)
Script to backup Win9x\ME drivers from a working install
Re: The thing no one asked for: KICAD 440bx reference schematic

Reply 4 of 132, by Kahenraz

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Upgrading from 256 color VGA to 16-bit colors. I can finally see all of the colors at once! I'll never have to upgrade my video card again.

This moment was inspired after being gifted Age of Empires for Christmas as a child and being unable to play because my computer didn't meet the minimum color depth requirements.

2D acceleration was very mature by the early 90s and was on average good enough for most games on the market. Once I'd unlocked "16-bit", I thought that there wasn't going to be much room for improvement and that the future had arrived. It was a shock to the video game market when 3D accelerators practically obsoleted everything overnight.

Reply 6 of 132, by Turboblack

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I think that nothing has happened in the world of computer innovations for more than 20 years.

Everything that is new is simply doubled power of previous "generations". I am talking about completed projects, I do not consider neural networks as such, there is still a lot of work to do on them, and perhaps only grandchildren will be able to use a decent neural network.

Computer games showed news in the 90s, then all the same but with improved graphics. If the game only has graphics - there is nothing for me to do there. In this case, I can look through the window, there the graphics are still better than in the PC.

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Reply 7 of 132, by rasz_pl

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My lifetime jaw drop technology list so far: 3dfx, internet, motorcycle, broadband internet, ssd, tesla.

1996 Playstation/Saturn brought fast arcade 3D to home
1997 3dfx brought it to PC
~1998 started using dialup internet
~2000 broadband internet. Installation fee was 2/3 of my monthly salary.

...incremental upgrades

~2010-11 affordable SSDs

https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module for AT&T Globalyst
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 memory board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS MFM-300 Monitor

Reply 8 of 132, by digger

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rasz_pl just beat me to it, but I have to concur: for me it was when I first saw 3dfx Voodoo graphics. A "game changer" in the most literal sense.

Up until then, it seemed that you always had to choose between buttery smooth frame rates and high resolution (640x480 even). You could never have both.

And then suddenly, poof, gone were the pixelated graphics, and not only was everything smooth at high resolutions, you got all these detailed textures and cool lighting effects that weren't even imaginable on PCs before then. I remember it feeling so surreal, that gigantic jump in PC gaming graphics quality. It may be hard to imagine for younger people reading this now, given how dated those first generation 3D-accelerated graphics from the late 90s look compared to graphics in present day games, but that just shows how much worse graphics were before then.

Almost overnight, the graphics quality that up until that point could only be witnessed in some high-end arcade cabinets became available on any reasonably modern PC for the time, equipped with a 3dfx card.

Last edited by digger on 2024-12-04, 09:59. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 10 of 132, by vetz

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- Seeing a Voodoo card in action in Quake for the first time (1997)
- Half-Life 2 physics from leaked E3 demo (2003)
- Opening scene in Crysis (2007)
- Experiencing touchscreen actually working on the first Iphone (2007)
- Sitting on Skype in Europe watching the sunset in Auckland New Zealand streamed live on video in HD quality while my friend was on the phone as a passenger in a driving car (2011)
- Using Flightradar's augmented 3D view to see in realtime the planes in the sky. Just point your camera/phone and get data on top of your screen (2012ish)

More recently:
- Chatgpt (yes I was impressed and a leap compared to how such services have worked in the past)

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

Reply 11 of 132, by gerry

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megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-04, 07:22:

Fallout 3 when you first step outside the vault. The sunlight momentarily blinds you and then gradually fades to reveal a map that stretches for what seems like miles and miles. That was genuinely breathtaking.

in gaming terms that's one of the most 'wow' moments, an earlier version was escaping the crashed ship in unreal

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-12-04, 07:51:

The GTA 4 Physics

"this car has pillows for suspension, bars of soap for tyres and the camera is on a piece of string randomly swirling about!! " actually gta 4 physics were impressive, HL2 was pretty impressive too

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-12-04, 09:37:

~1998 started using dialup internet

i started earlier - but it was a definite 'future' moment, the idea that people across the globe could communicate and create like this, such an optimistic future! (and look at what happened...)

to add one more - the time, fairly recent, that LLM 'ai' like chatgpt actually became capable of conversing without sounding overly awkward and non human - it still is 'different' from people, but its also an amazing and at times unnerving experience

Reply 12 of 132, by dionb

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Installing my first SSD.

Without any doubt the biggest impact of any upgrade (well, to be honest: since upgrading from cassette tapes to disks)

Aside from that, optical mice (even the early ones with metal grid mats) and IPS TFT panels.

Biggest retrograde step: that completely flat MacBook Pro keyboard. I thought that idea had been dead and buried since the demise of the ZX81.

Reply 13 of 132, by firage

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CD-ROM was the most incredible thing and I don’t think another innovation quite compares to the wonder it was at its introduction. Multimedia, music, massive capacity for software and games, FMV, the PlayStation.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 14 of 132, by Joseph_Joestar

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dionb wrote on 2024-12-04, 10:52:

Installing my first SSD.

Without any doubt the biggest impact of any upgrade (well, to be honest: since upgrading from cassette tapes to disks)

Aside from that, optical mice (even the early ones with metal grid mats)

I strongly agree with both of these.

Using an SSD is a game changer, your entire system instantly feels faster, despite all the other components remaining the same. When I bought my first SSD in 2016 or so, I liked it so much that I got one for my PlayStation 4 Pro as well. Made a noticeable difference there too, though not quite as much as on the PC. Nowadays, I only use mechanical drives for long term data storage, never for gaming or the OS.

Also, I always hated mechanical ball mice with a passion (even during the 90s), and was thrilled when optical mice finally became cheap and readily available.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 15 of 132, by Jo22

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Hm. Virtual Reality in the 90s? Shutter LCD glasses, cyber helmets..

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 16 of 132, by elszgensa

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CD recorders. "What, I can have all of my floppies on one, maybe two custom discs recorded right here at home?" Flash drives didn't give me the same effect since they started out small and expensive and slowly grew from there.

More console than PC, but - HD TVs, and not necessarily in a good way. "God dammit I cannot read any of this tiny text any more. Time to set aside a huge part of my allowance, because they're forcing me to upgrade."

3D accelerators (in my case, a Voodoo 1).

I'm torn about whether to list my first sound card or not. Sure, now my PC could talk, and compared to the PC speaker it was a hue upgrade - but my TV had been able to do that for years.

SSDs might have been another one - but not for me, since I eased into them by ways of one of those hybrid SSHDs.

Last edited by elszgensa on 2024-12-04, 11:57. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 17 of 132, by H3nrik V!

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dionb wrote on 2024-12-04, 10:52:

Installing my first SSD.

Without any doubt the biggest impact of any upgrade (well, to be honest: since upgrading from cassette tapes to disks)

Yes, yes and a thousand times YES. It was like getting a completely new computer - and silent as a bonus.

Before that; Voodoo graphics. Pretty much blew us away in the 90s

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

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Reply 18 of 132, by liqmat

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Commodore Amiga (later called the 1000 model) - most dramatic boost in graphics, sound and UI I’ve ever experienced. Only time I actually got butterflies in my stomach using a computer. When one landed on our desk in late 85/early 86 I remember playing Axel F over and over again in that glorious four channel sound. I could not believe a computer could produce these things in such realism. It was a very different time.

Close second was the first 3Dfx card. SGI like graphics in games! Finally! This was my first thought when I saw those first few 3Dfx demos.

SSD drives. Yeah, I still love my spinning rust for glacier storage, but solid state changed everything. No more long, soul crushing boot times.

Reply 19 of 132, by wbahnassi

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VGA, Sound Blaster, Internet, and SSDs. In that order..

I was never wowed by realtime 3D nor 3D acceleration as its inception was all ugly wobbly cracky triangles that couldn't suspend disbelief.

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
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Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti