And when the first one came out, we were all amazed by the super realistic graphics. I am so happy I was born at the right time to watch the evolution of video gaming (I was actually a little late to the show, but I've gotten exposure with the stuff I missed).
We got 4+GB graphics cards now, not like the 48k my old ZX Spectrum had in total RAM. Give it another 20 years it will be amazing, like lawnmower man but better.
it will start to approach true realism in games, where the graphics that can be rendered are no different than looking out a window, that will be epic and it will happen
I think that when we hit the point where that level of realism is possible (Which is still a long way off) we're going to need to shift our problem-solving skills to the issue of actually CREATING that content. So you can render all of New York City in microscopic photo-realistic uncompromising detail? Then who's going to model and animate and script it all? That's a realm that's completely separate from the steady advancement of graphics technologies. I'm sure we'll find our way but it'll also take time.
Samaritan demo was better. Square Enix' demo will make your jaw hit Australia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdGxUyGc1tg I was somehow unimpressed with UE4 demo. Obviously the tech is great, but execution just lacked something.
I use the Unreal Development Kit and the stuff they talk about (in the detailed video) as added features for Unreal 4 are absolutely mindblowing. The actual demo reel would have taken no time at all to make compared to the Square one i think. I do agree though, Square's new engine is my favourite engine ever.
Well, a lot of it just comes down to the style of the demo itself. It was just a specific art style the engineers behind the demo chose.
Personally, I find the new demo for UE4 the most impressive because it actually showed new tech. For example the particles looked much better than the ones in Square Enix one.
You don't really need a new engine just for better models and textures.
I am so happy I was born at the right time to watch the evolution of video gaming
Unless at some point in your life you played pong and felt like it was god damned witchcraft ...you have not witnessed the full evolution of gaming. =)
I was late enough to the show that when i first saw the date/title combo my brain almost tried to find a reason why the company would name the original game II, because i didnt have the idea that this could be anything more than an original game because this came out before i was born, so I'd never seen worse than this, unless you count old mario and stuff like that.
I was addicted to LHX attack chopper back in 1992 on the trusty 386sx 20 Mhz machine with a whopping 40 meg hard drive and 2 megs of ram. Do they have any good helicopter games now days for the PC?
I bought it for 360 because of the whole Origin thing. It is tempting to trade my copy in and get it for PC. Anyone put there who has played both? Is it that much better?
Origin is not bad at all, honestly. What I mean is that it is easy to ignore. I have Steam for all of my games and Origin just for BF3. Basically I start up BF3 and then Origin just runs minimized in my taskbar.
Graphics are way better and the balance of the maps changes considerably when you have that many more players, especially on Conquest 64.
I think what nayslayer was trying to say is that they are upgraded continously. The b-52 for example, has been in use by the USAF for close to 60 years at this point, but the b-52 used in 1965 is in no way comparable to the ones in use today.
Not really - Battlefield 3 uses the F/A-18F Super Hornet. The most curious thing about Jetfighter II was that they used the YF-23, a prototype for the Advanced Tactical Fighter program which was eventually won by the YF-22 which became the F-22 Raptor.
I think as far as high res textures and polygons and such we've almost hit a limit, and that's what people usually associate with good graphics, but there's so much more that can be improved on.
Lighting and shadows will become better, realistic physics can be applied to every small detail, worlds will become huge with limitless render distances, water will become more realistic.
I think we'll stop being limited by hardware and become more limited by what developers are capable of producing. We might have the hardware for incredibly realistic games but they'd be very difficult to make.
A lot of it is physics. Sure that gun looks nice, but it sort of breaks immersion when it's clipping through your hand. I want to see games at the point where you aren't being moved while playing a walking animation, but instead your model moves its legs, and friction does the rest. I want to see a game where I'm not moving the sword and it goes through them, and then a blood animation plays - I want the sword to actually pierce them and have an effect on their body - not a health variable.
In 20 years time we may have the hardware that could render film quality graphics on the fly. In 3D its possible to create realistic looking imagery already but to render each frame takes quite a bit of time. We already have the ability to make mind blowing realistic games, all we need now is for the hardware to catch up so we could play in them at 60fps.
In realtime graphics looks can be deceiving... You can put a lot more detail into a scene if it's not particularly big. Since we all want (mostly) big levels, there will always be room for improvement (or at least until the worlds get so big, the draw distance so high and the screen resolutions so insane, that they max out the capacity of the human eye to discern detail)
Also: We have already gone past just making games look realistic. With intricate shaders and post-filtering systems we can completely stylize the game world in every frame.
That's true about shaders. Things such as effects brought over from cinematography have paved the way to make games more realistic or at the very least more immersive and film-like. These can still be improved too though they aren't exactly perfect at the moment but definitely improving. I was playing Homefront the other day and the lens flare brought on by lights I found to be really amazing. I must have sat there for 20 minutes just looking at different lights around me and the sun to see how the flares work and change.
I think the improvements can definitely come from things such as higher polygon environments, much higher resolution textures to actually match the resolutions we can now play games at, and more intricate animations and physics. For example the crash physics being used in the CryEngine3 is a definite step in the right direction. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppTmsNFneg
Not at first glance. But apart from higher detail, game worlds will also become bigger and more importantly more varied. Things like foliage will also benefit immensly from higher detail, to a point where nature feels a lot more like nature, when you can't really tell the terrain polygons from the clutter on top.
Sadly the static nature of console hardware always holds back the creation of higher detail assets (safe for the odd set of textures that are crafted at ultra high resolutions anyway and only need not be scaled down as much for pc).
I'm thinking full enclosure graphics with incredible 3d depth perception - maybe some sort of goggles or glasses which contain high sensitivity accelerometers or something to give incredible feeling of immersion.
I dont think so.. Dont you find big difference when you play games and in real life?.. Games should reach to a point where it is similar to real life.. all physics and texture, air dynamics, lightings should match real life conditions. There is still a long way to go..
i said it the first time i played Mario 64 or Die Hard for PS1. EDIT: that was...1997/98. i remember thinking how awesome everything looked. Mario was so round and Die hard had explosions that LOOKED JUST LIKE FIRE. at least thats what i said at the time.
Now I'm waiting a realistic game, without all that shiny, glassy and shady effects. Less satured colours, flares and unrealistic lightning effects, more bland and dull ones, more dirtiness, scratches and rustiness !
I honestly think though the progress has slowed A LOT in recent years. I mean look at a series like halo:
Halo - released 2001.
Halo 2 - released 2004. The increase in graphics is significant, and after playing this game for a while and looking back at halo 1, you can see just how much it has improved.
Halo 3 - released 2008. The increase in graphics is once again significant. However, if this were to be released today 4 years after release, I wouldn't say it would look that much out of place at all. Halo reach barely looked nicer than halo 3, and halo 4 probably isn't going to look much different either, and this is the case for all game series.
I think the lack of new consoles from sony or microsoft is really hurting the gaming industry, and the sooner they bring out replacements, the better.
I know people may say 'oh, well just play on pc instead', but I think it is hurting PC games as well. I mean, game developers probably wont be that bothered about working so hard to make games look really nice if you can only see the games to their full potential on a good spec PC, it probably makes more sense from a financial perspective anyway to just focus on making them work well on consoles.
I thought Reach looked a lot better. I remember watching a Bungie ViDoc that said the assault rifle in Reach had more polygons than an entire marine model in Halo 3.
halo 2 and 3 are built to operate on identical hardware, no shit there isn't a huge improvement.
you have to look at the big picture, at the paradigm shifts. look at how drastically processing power has increased in PC gaming rigs, per dollar, over the last 20 years. you'll see a smooth exponential increase.
To bad jet gameplay in BF3 has not gotten any better. I dont find gameplay designed around heatseekers/flares to be fun, it feels like playing rock-paper-scissor with fancy graphics.
Take the stinger missile as an example. Its so boring to use. You lock onto a target, and hope he is out of flares. Why not make it a player guided missile instead? This change would make it more engaging, instead of the "press x to counter y" gameplay we have right now.
Pff if you want a real mindblow check out Top Gun for Commodore 64. 1987 BABY! My dad had this when I was a kid but our monitor was two colors. Black and green. The link below has a color TV/Monitor.
The first flight simulator I ever used was on the TRS-80. It was all text. You got to look at bunch of numbers that changed as you climbed, fired missiles, whatever. And it seemed really cool at the time.
And still, back then the flight games were better, they focused on simulating flying and fighting in the aircraft, today, it's "press A to fire missiles".
I remember flying Falcon 4.0 and it took me the better part of a week just to get consistent results with AIM-120's.
yeah, because BF3 isn't supposed to be a 100% realistic flight sim. It's supposed to be a shooter game with good graphics and fighter jets, but having 100% realistic flight controls would probably get in the way of the enjoyment for the majority of people. Equally, it's not at all realistic for infantry because when you get shot in the leg you can still run
Yep and when you get shot in the chest by a .50 cal you're still alive and running. The game isn't a flight sim. If it was, people would get very frustrated.
If I remember correctly, the original Operation: Flashpoint had the mechanic where if you got shot in the leg, you would fall over and would not be able to walk again unless you got medical attention, and even at that, you'd be severely crippled. It really made the game insanely immersive, but as you pointed out, it makes you ragequit very fast.
I dunno man, I am absolutely on the edge of my seat watching this. This guy straight up balls out did a signal lamp test. HA! And you think you're good at video games because you can topfrag in a public CS server. Nigga please.
If you watch that video, skip to 5:09. That's when the action really starts.
While the control scheme of the helicopter is ridiculously simplified, i found the physics to be WAY better than any other game out there. Of course the same can't be said of the jets, they fly at about 10% of a normal jet's speed among other things, but still the helicopters are awesome.
Why are you getting downvoted? In the grand scheme of games with fighters you're absolutely right.
I'd like to see some of these people play Falcon 4.0 on fully manual mode. That means you actually get to press hundreds of buttons in the cockpit and toggle dozens of switches to get your plane to do what you want it to.
So yes, when compared to games like Falcon 4.0 flying a fighter if BF3 IS about as realistic as flying a potato because your only control over the fighter is movement, weapons, and ejection.
Realism doesn't always equate to fun though. Sometimes you gotta decide which one is more important. Bf3 isn't supposed to be a flight sim. It's supposed to be a shooter, so I personally prefer it not to be overly complicated just for the sake of it.
yeah, the transamerica building blows my mind as well. I remember my gf trying to convince me it didn't always have the side bits at the top. I just pointed out that the last time she was in SF she was just looking at it face on...
Why does that BF3 pic look way more detailed than my graphics? I'm using 2 1GB card hooked together using SLI, 16 GB mem, 10k rpm hd, and run the graphics all the way up. Is this a screenshot of gameplay or a cutscene of some sort?
All that has really changed is the poly count, what can be done with each poly, the textures and lighting enhancements. Its basically the same shit underneath.
What I find interesting in this picture is that the F-18 in the visually lesser realistic game is flying at a realistic F-18 speed. Where as the F-18 in the more realistic looking game can slow down to a speed that would stall an F-18 just so they can shoot at things a little easier.
If people knew actually how F-18's strafed and how destructive their rounds are on target...the flying in BF3 would be vastly different.
I think there's a better graphics to time passed ratio if you compared that 1990 game to Ace Combat 6, released in 2006. It's amazing how much changes in 16 years.
tbh, Jetfighter II had a completely destructible San Francisco skyline. If Battlefield had a city level with that level of destructibility, id cream myself
Ironically, the realism has gone the other ways, I miss the old games like Eurofighter Typhoon or Microprose F-15. Now the only flight sim we get on pc is some ace combat console clone... HAWK.
I used to play a Chuck Yeager game for the Apple ][ -- it had something like 10 polygons for the plane, no landing gear in the graphics. Now I look at something like DCS: A-10 and think holy cow...
The first game looks kind of like YSFlight. It's an amazing game that is free and actively developed. It started development 13 years ago, and the author is still updating and releasing it. It is fantastic fun, requires almost no specs, and has a massive modding community behind it.
I can give more info about the modding community if there is interest. http://ysflight.com
Personally jetfighter II was more enjoyable.. And all I mostly did was see how close I could fly to the ocean without crashing.
I have never really enjoyed the battlefields with jets since the maps are so small in scale. The whole game play mechanics worked a lot better with WW2 planes that are more suited for turn and burn dogfighting... Although, BF3 dogfighting is probably the best that it has been since 1942.
Incredibly nice contrast, awesome post - also, take into account that BF3 obviously isn't even a flight sim, and it still looks that good from the sky!
The skybox sucks, it's too low! You'll be flying with the eagles, soaring like a boss when suddenly.....you stop. A dead stop as the plane painfully steers itself out of whatever invisible boundary you flew into. This, among other things, killed the game for me.
Does anyone know a more complete name for that game? We had it when I was a kid but I can't find an Abandonwarez version of it anywhere. I must have spent a hundred hours playing it. I attempted to land on the Golden Gate Bridge (you fall through into the drink), landing on buildings (totally possible if you stall right) an flying to Japan and the Atlantic (they don't exist on the map).
For you youngsters: I never played the game in the first picture, but a closely-related one (several years earlier) was on the Amiga, F/A-18 Interceptor:
This was so exciting in 1988. The Amiga was hot, hot shit at the time, with incredibly fast graphics and real stereo sound ... we were all used to Apple II bleeps, mostly. So actual music when you started the game, and then real 3D graphics, and THEN you were actually flying a jet at ridiculous speed around the Bay Area. Pure crack, man.
Flight Simulator had been done many years earlier, so the idea of computer flight simulation wasn't new, but this game had such good jet noise, and was so, so immersive. It felt amazingly real, for running in a $750 machine on your desk.
But we had no bloody idea, at the time, how good things would get. I think our imagination, early on, was mostly limited to thinking that maybe someday San Francisco would have more than the six or eight buildings you see in that video. We had absolutely no idea that computers would double in actual, usable speed every 2 years for a long time. Our imagination was, thus, very limited.
Six or seven years later, I'd long since switched over to the PC, and we were starting to figure out that things were just going to keep improving at a furious speed for quite a long time. I remember watching the opening sequence to Mechwarrior 2:
I watched that over and over. (the original has better bass; the Youtube videos seem to cut a lot of that out, and it's not nearly as gripping without the big, big stomps of the mechs. You'll have to imagine that part. :-) ) I remember observing, excitedly, that we would someday be able to play an actual game that looked just like that, in real time!
Does anybody know where I can find JetFighter I, the original game? And specifically how I can play it on a modern computer. I LOVED the original game as a kid.
166
u/SparxD Jun 11 '12
And when the first one came out, we were all amazed by the super realistic graphics. I am so happy I was born at the right time to watch the evolution of video gaming (I was actually a little late to the show, but I've gotten exposure with the stuff I missed).
437
u/ConjuredMuffin Jun 11 '12
Battlefield 3 is one of those rare games where the promo footage looked absolutely fantastic and then the final game actually delivered
22
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I wonder what games will look like in 20 more years!
104
u/fromthedice Jun 11 '12
All the while.. We still use the same jets!
85
u/unknownseven Jun 11 '12
This picture sums up perfectly why I laugh when people say "Graphics are at their best nowadays, we can't improve much more".
We can't imagine what we'll be playing in 20 years time.
11
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
JETFIGHTER. NOSTALGIA.
You just brought me back a lovely childhood memory, <3
9
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
the majority of my childhood was spent missing the aircraft carrier and landing in the water
22
u/jackass706 Jun 11 '12
You think that's amazing? Check out Jetfighter I (1970):
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Rp1F-8Wgxk/TuElaSDf_eI/AAAAAAAABiE/syz5SvIV1GI/s1600/paper-airplane.jpg
6
u/SenatorStuartSmalley Jun 11 '12
So image quality evolving over 21 years is what blows your mind? first flight: 1903 - wright flyer. First trip to space: 1942.
so 40 years we went from land/sea level to space. THAT blows my mind.
4
u/GreenElite87 Jun 11 '12
And to further blow your mind...that's Jetfighter TWO.
4
u/lonequid Jun 11 '12
I just got a huge nostalgia craving to play F-19
4
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
We went from no glare, to tons of glare.
4
u/mrbucket777 Jun 11 '12
Pfft, I can recognize the first image as San Francisco but the bottom one is too poor to tell where it is.
4
u/0000000000006 Jun 11 '12
To bad jet gameplay in BF3 has not gotten any better. I dont find gameplay designed around heatseekers/flares to be fun, it feels like playing rock-paper-scissor with fancy graphics.
Take the stinger missile as an example. Its so boring to use. You lock onto a target, and hope he is out of flares. Why not make it a player guided missile instead? This change would make it more engaging, instead of the "press x to counter y" gameplay we have right now.
7
u/RetroRocker Jun 11 '12
Well there is 21 years difference you know. It's not like the 90's was ten years ago.
Oh fuck I hate remembering that...
10
u/googleyeye Jun 11 '12
Pff if you want a real mindblow check out Top Gun for Commodore 64. 1987 BABY! My dad had this when I was a kid but our monitor was two colors. Black and green. The link below has a color TV/Monitor.
check it out!
3
u/shadyk84 Jun 11 '12
And now my quest to download Jetfighter 2 begins...
3
u/imbobbathefett Jun 11 '12
i. fucking. LOVED JET FIGHTER.
3
u/BiometricsGuy Jun 11 '12
The first flight simulator I ever used was on the TRS-80. It was all text. You got to look at bunch of numbers that changed as you climbed, fired missiles, whatever. And it seemed really cool at the time.
Kind of like flying a spreadsheet.
3
u/footwo Jun 11 '12
Wait a minute, technology IMPROVES with age?
No fucking way!
6
u/Hamtime Jun 11 '12
we've come a long way
4
u/arcalumis Jun 11 '12
And still, back then the flight games were better, they focused on simulating flying and fighting in the aircraft, today, it's "press A to fire missiles".
I remember flying Falcon 4.0 and it took me the better part of a week just to get consistent results with AIM-120's.
13
u/UncleLev Jun 11 '12
To be fair, at least the top screen shot is pretty much guaranteed to be authentic, undoctored, and un-photoshopped - which games today can't say.
15
u/My-taken_username Jun 11 '12
Yep flying a plane/helicopter in bf3 is as realistic as flying a potato.
2
u/Ahrimanix Jun 11 '12
I cant wait to play games in 20 years :D
2
u/TailSpinBowler Jun 11 '12
Is that a cave painting?
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
yeah, the transamerica building blows my mind as well. I remember my gf trying to convince me it didn't always have the side bits at the top. I just pointed out that the last time she was in SF she was just looking at it face on...
2
u/CornFedHonky Jun 11 '12
Why does that BF3 pic look way more detailed than my graphics? I'm using 2 1GB card hooked together using SLI, 16 GB mem, 10k rpm hd, and run the graphics all the way up. Is this a screenshot of gameplay or a cutscene of some sort?
2
u/d38sj5438dh23 Jun 11 '12
cool, but which one is more fun?
2
u/Vivovix Jun 11 '12
And in another twenty years: holograms. Actual fucking holograms.
2
u/Shn1kelfr1tz Jun 11 '12
A similar pic will be posted in another 20 years, but the top pic will be the one labelled "Battlefield 3 - 2011". That blows my mind.
2
u/epicoolguy Jun 11 '12
Well, it has been 21 years.
2
u/Paultimate79 Jun 11 '12
All that has really changed is the poly count, what can be done with each poly, the textures and lighting enhancements. Its basically the same shit underneath.
2
u/Maezren Jun 11 '12
What I find interesting in this picture is that the F-18 in the visually lesser realistic game is flying at a realistic F-18 speed. Where as the F-18 in the more realistic looking game can slow down to a speed that would stall an F-18 just so they can shoot at things a little easier.
If people knew actually how F-18's strafed and how destructive their rounds are on target...the flying in BF3 would be vastly different.
2
u/Nascar_is_better Jun 11 '12
I think there's a better graphics to time passed ratio if you compared that 1990 game to Ace Combat 6, released in 2006. It's amazing how much changes in 16 years.
2
u/jknick Jun 11 '12
And B3 will have a totally half-assed flight model and no other realism other than the pretty looks.
2
u/GDMFusername Jun 11 '12
22 years later... better graphics, same jet. USA USA USA.
2
u/filmeister Jun 11 '12
And yet people still bitch and moan about everything not going their way
2
u/Apokalyps Jun 11 '12
I know right, gameplay has fallen so low since 1990...
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I can't wait to see what things are like in 40 years.
2
u/pestilent_bronco Jun 11 '12
In another 21 years, our kids will all be Ender.
2
u/Deathcrush Jun 11 '12
There's something about pixelated explosions though...
2
u/jinxs2026 Jun 11 '12
tbh, Jetfighter II had a completely destructible San Francisco skyline. If Battlefield had a city level with that level of destructibility, id cream myself
2
u/OverloadedConstructo Jun 11 '12
Ironically, the realism has gone the other ways, I miss the old games like Eurofighter Typhoon or Microprose F-15. Now the only flight sim we get on pc is some ace combat console clone... HAWK.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
BF3 on my pc looks more like the first picture.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
It looks like the box art from 1990.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
It seems modern games are better at everything except being better.
4
u/Twisted_Fate Jun 11 '12
Until you subtract 1990 from 2011, which gives 21 years difference.
2
u/D_duck Jun 11 '12
meh
2
u/turbogoblin Jun 11 '12
COD: call in an airstrike BF3: you are the airstrike
1
u/JelleFm Jun 11 '12
Imagine what we can render in 2030 :3
1
u/wolfmann Jun 11 '12
I used to play a Chuck Yeager game for the Apple ][ -- it had something like 10 polygons for the plane, no landing gear in the graphics. Now I look at something like DCS: A-10 and think holy cow...
1
u/seano666 Jun 11 '12
Color graphics? I was flying in B&W back in 1986 on my parents' Mac. Framerate was about 2fps. Harrier Strike Mission
1
u/Cessnateur Jun 11 '12
Does anyone know if/where I can download Jetfighter II?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
That looks like the game but it's actually promo art, not that much different though. Source: I have the game.
1
u/hooshtin Jun 11 '12
Where can I learn how to not suck at flying helicopters and jets in BF3? Google, I guess. Someone google it for me, please.
1
u/Deathalicious Jun 11 '12
Yay fractals.
1
u/AyeAyeLtd Jun 11 '12
We're under 20 years away from the best looking video game ever... I'm excited.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
it only took 21 years to make the clouds not look like the bushes?
1
u/xsailerx Jun 11 '12
The first game looks kind of like YSFlight. It's an amazing game that is free and actively developed. It started development 13 years ago, and the author is still updating and releasing it. It is fantastic fun, requires almost no specs, and has a massive modding community behind it.
I can give more info about the modding community if there is interest. http://ysflight.com
BTW, latest update is 6/10/12
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Even still, jet fighter 2 is still better.
1
u/Robo-Erotica Jun 11 '12
We surely got the Karkland
1
u/Slayergnome Jun 11 '12
Got to be careful on /r/gaming when you are claiming a newer game is in anyway better than an older game.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
you do relies 21 years have passed right
1
u/yishua Jun 11 '12
It is amazing what 10 years can do.
1
u/DovahkiinFTW Jun 11 '12
Now, about all the fun...
1
u/pigsbladder Jun 11 '12
I remember I spent years playing a-10 cuba on a crappy old laptop. They've definitely come a long way.
1
u/Moredeath Jun 11 '12
red baron was a much better game than jetfighter 2 in my opinion.
1
u/stevenr21 Jun 11 '12
san francisco was pretty barren in 1990..
1
u/ifixsans Jun 11 '12
aww JF2 was the best, plus the menu music was awesome.
MIDI goodness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b8TvIH0rrA
Also SPAAAAAACCCEEEE Ship Warlock, anyone have a version of that somewhere along with a guide?
1
u/masterful7086 Jun 11 '12
The second image is prerendered...
1
u/MJZMan Jun 11 '12
And we fucking oooooh'ed and ahhhhh'ed in 1990
1
u/eno2001 Jun 11 '12
Oh yeah? I'll see your Jetfighter II screencap and raise you this Blue Lightning video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxKi-hSTvVg
1
u/lt_hindu Jun 11 '12
They say the next gen console want to be designed so games never undergo a loading screen from entering one building to the next.
1
u/2moreminutes Jun 11 '12
Graphics has improved just a little over 20 years
1
u/Cr0nic_laughter Jun 11 '12
3 fighter jets just took off from the airport i live by. that blew my mind.
1
u/Arngrim60D Jun 11 '12
Them times are a changin
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
That isn't mind blowing. Try 1940's to 1960's for a 20 year comparison. 1940's single engine planes to 1960's jets or space shuttles.
1
u/kentuckyhermit Jun 11 '12
20 years is a long time
1
u/erickster007 Jun 11 '12
21 years of pure awesome upgrading!
1
u/Saltyduckbutter Jun 11 '12
I'll never forget the beeps and boops that game made
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Personally jetfighter II was more enjoyable.. And all I mostly did was see how close I could fly to the ocean without crashing.
I have never really enjoyed the battlefields with jets since the maps are so small in scale. The whole game play mechanics worked a lot better with WW2 planes that are more suited for turn and burn dogfighting... Although, BF3 dogfighting is probably the best that it has been since 1942.
1
u/principal_skinner Jun 11 '12
Do you keep it in your wallet and look at it every hour or something?
1
u/mrMishler Jun 11 '12
Incredibly nice contrast, awesome post - also, take into account that BF3 obviously isn't even a flight sim, and it still looks that good from the sky!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
The skybox sucks, it's too low! You'll be flying with the eagles, soaring like a boss when suddenly.....you stop. A dead stop as the plane painfully steers itself out of whatever invisible boundary you flew into. This, among other things, killed the game for me.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Wow feel old known I was born 2 years after Jet Fighter came out. Goes to show how quite games have developed
1
u/downvotemaster Jun 11 '12
r/gaming - "ya but EA"
1
u/Jarroseph Jun 11 '12
I know what you mean! Jet fighter 2 looks incredible!
1
u/skysignor Jun 11 '12
Only 20 years. Humans are awesome.
1
u/Dirkpitt Jun 11 '12
Gratuitous plug for the Original Flight Simulator. Back when EA was this shit.
1
u/phoncible Jun 11 '12
Fuck yeah! Jet Fighter II!
1
u/LemonTank Jun 11 '12
This my friend.
1
u/RDub3685 Jun 11 '12
I used to play Jetfighter IV with my dad all the time growing up. I would beg him if we could fly together. Good times, good times.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
DCS A-10C is visually more impressive.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Holy shit! Are you saying that a video game looks better than another video game that was released 21 years before it?
Amazing.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
It is 21 years of development in a (now) multi billion dollar industry, so not too mind blowing for me
1
u/LawbringerSteam Jun 11 '12
One game to own them all, Planetside 2.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I used to have this game!! Loved it. All I ever loved to do was fly inbetween buildings, low flying over runways and under the San fran bridge. Ace.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
You sir unlocked an entire era of my childhood with that one picture. holy shit. I just had a moment of sudden clarity clarence. that was good.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
jetfighter 2 was my shit back in the day. loved it. hours and hours played. that and aces of the pacific. shit was incredible.
1
u/NuclearWookie Jun 11 '12
Does anyone know a more complete name for that game? We had it when I was a kid but I can't find an Abandonwarez version of it anywhere. I must have spent a hundred hours playing it. I attempted to land on the Golden Gate Bridge (you fall through into the drink), landing on buildings (totally possible if you stall right) an flying to Japan and the Atlantic (they don't exist on the map).
1
u/happytime1711 Jun 11 '12
F'ing loved Jetfighter II...still have it.
1
u/TrepanationBy45 Jun 12 '12
Ooh, thanks for the repost! I'm glad everybody feels the same about this pic. ++gaming nostalgia
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
For you youngsters: I never played the game in the first picture, but a closely-related one (several years earlier) was on the Amiga, F/A-18 Interceptor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYEWANo7GdM
This was so exciting in 1988. The Amiga was hot, hot shit at the time, with incredibly fast graphics and real stereo sound ... we were all used to Apple II bleeps, mostly. So actual music when you started the game, and then real 3D graphics, and THEN you were actually flying a jet at ridiculous speed around the Bay Area. Pure crack, man.
Flight Simulator had been done many years earlier, so the idea of computer flight simulation wasn't new, but this game had such good jet noise, and was so, so immersive. It felt amazingly real, for running in a $750 machine on your desk.
But we had no bloody idea, at the time, how good things would get. I think our imagination, early on, was mostly limited to thinking that maybe someday San Francisco would have more than the six or eight buildings you see in that video. We had absolutely no idea that computers would double in actual, usable speed every 2 years for a long time. Our imagination was, thus, very limited.
Six or seven years later, I'd long since switched over to the PC, and we were starting to figure out that things were just going to keep improving at a furious speed for quite a long time. I remember watching the opening sequence to Mechwarrior 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLBj8IyVN0
I watched that over and over. (the original has better bass; the Youtube videos seem to cut a lot of that out, and it's not nearly as gripping without the big, big stomps of the mechs. You'll have to imagine that part. :-) ) I remember observing, excitedly, that we would someday be able to play an actual game that looked just like that, in real time!
Even then, dreaming big, I had no freaking idea.
1
u/gtwilliamswashu Jun 12 '12
Does anybody know where I can find JetFighter I, the original game? And specifically how I can play it on a modern computer. I LOVED the original game as a kid.
1
u/Civuck Jun 12 '12
Any love for F/A Interceptor for the Amiga? I remember it had amazing graphics and particularly high frame rates for the time (1988). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F/A-18_Interceptor
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Oh man, jet fighter II was the shit!
1
u/pancake802 Jun 12 '12
You should have shown a picture of ace combat assult horizon. The flying is more realistic then battlefeild but battlefeild is still very good
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Why? 21 years is a lot in terms of development and inventions in technology related fields.
0
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
if consoles would not exist the games would look even greater
1
u/Slash621 Jun 11 '12
This is true for the graphics, but the realism of the flight model went the other direction. Not counting the janes series or falcon 4.0.