3 ms·

>30-year-old 3D Engine I saw that title and thought to myself "Wow, a 3D game engine from the 80's!" before realizing 30 years ago was 1994-95, during the time

>30-year-old 3D Engine I saw that title and thought to myself "Wow, a 3D game engine from the 80's!" before realizing 30 years ago was 1994-95, during the time of Doom 2 and a year before the first Quake. Damn, I'm getting old fast.

vundercind 2y ago
I'm sure everyone experiences this some, but do wonder if it's maybe worse for those for whom the year 2000 hit at the wrong point in their personal timeline. I don't think I ever quite got over guesstimating "X years ago" based on that marker. I've gotten a little better at it, but still get tripped up for a second by times-ago longer than 20 years or so. The other day I was reading something and was surprised that "50 years ago" was the mid '70s, not, like, the 50s. Then they hit me with Guardians of the Galaxy already being ten years old. Ouch, right in the mortality.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  See this fact, GTA Vice City was set in the year 1986 and was released in the year 2003. That game is now older (21 years) than the time period it was set in when it launched (17 years). So if they made that game today with the same time delta, it would be set in the year 2008 when we already had the second gen iPhone. I think this perceived time warp is affecting many people in the 30+ age group since the world(at least the west) hasn't changed that much in the last 10-15 years or so, so compared to the past when 10-15 years delta made a huge difference, especially in the areas of technology and entertainment, so it kinda feels like time just went by us while the world stood still.
  - ghurtado 2y ago
    You've put it much better than I could. Basically, the 80s feel like they happened about 100 years ago. Which makes us depressingly old.
  - fmbb 2y ago
    The further we get past the year 2000 the more clear it becomes that all the pre-2000 memes of 2000 being the future were right, and not much happened in the west in terms of quality of life or daily conveniences or productivity since 2000.
    - JetSpiegel 2y ago
      The Matrix was right!
- vikingerik 2y ago
  Yeah. Here's another: Space Invaders is now closer in time to the Gamecube than the Gamecube is to today. Similarly, Windows 95 is now closer in time to the Intel 4004 microprocessor than to today.
  - doubled112 2y ago
    I've heard this put as "we're farther in time from the PS2 than the PS2 was from the Atari 2600" It makes you think though. Has the innovation run out of steam?
- vidarh 2y ago
  What really makes me feel old is realising Jurassic Park is as ancient to my son now as the early 1960's movies my parents would show me from their childhood when I was a kid.
  - Negitivefrags 2y ago
    The other day I made a reference to something from Jurassic Park at work to a fresh graduate, and got a blank stare. So I say "You know, from Jurassic Park". And was told "Oh, I've never seen it". I have never felt older than in that moment.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      How's this: if you're over 27 years old, you were born closer to the moon landing than the present day.
scrapheap 2y ago
The Freescape 3D Engine was in use in the 80's (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescape ).
- ghurtado 2y ago
  Good ol' Driller will always be my first 3D game. The novelty of 3D graphics that were more than the plain wireframes of Elite, was such that we put up with the 1 FPS framerate for hours on end. I wish I could regain some of that wonder back, but all the Raytracing and RTX make it very hard to find.
pjc50 2y ago
I suppose this is where I plug my own 30 year old 3D engine (caution: it's not very good) https://github.com/pjc50/ancient-3d-for-turboc https://github.com/pjc50/ancient-3d-for-turboc
gwern 2y ago
I think that a lot of people feel like this post-COVID, like there's a sort of 'temporal collapse' where you feel stuck in a Big Now where Now never changes, no matter how many days do, and the pounds accumulate but not the years... I wonder if there's something to how delayed careers and life progression, and the shift to streaming/recommendation heavy media, and the apparent 'stuckness' of culture, all contribute to this feeling of being unmoored in time and being unable to realize intuitively that '30 years ago was 1994'? I've been experimenting on my website with automatically adding to all years or dates a little subscript like '5ya'. While I thought it was clunky at first, I'm finding it helpful to be regularly reminded that when I mention something that happened in '2003', that really was '21 years ago', and I feel a little less like Billy Pilgrim.
- fluoridation 2y ago
  I did feel like that for the first couple years, but I feel like it's a separate effect from feeling like it's still 2000.

vundercind 2y ago

I'm sure everyone experiences this some, but do wonder if it's maybe worse for those for whom the year 2000 hit at the wrong point in their personal timeline. I don't think I ever quite got over guesstimating "X years ago" based on that marker. I've gotten a little better at it, but still get tripped up for a second by times-ago longer than 20 years or so. The other day I was reading something and was surprised that "50 years ago" was the mid '70s, not, like, the 50s. Then they hit me with Guardians of the Galaxy already being ten years old. Ouch, right in the mortality.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
See this fact, GTA Vice City was set in the year 1986 and was released in the year 2003. That game is now older (21 years) than the time period it was set in when it launched (17 years). So if they made that game today with the same time delta, it would be set in the year 2008 when we already had the second gen iPhone. I think this perceived time warp is affecting many people in the 30+ age group since the world(at least the west) hasn't changed that much in the last 10-15 years or so, so compared to the past when 10-15 years delta made a huge difference, especially in the areas of technology and entertainment, so it kinda feels like time just went by us while the world stood still.
- ghurtado 2y ago
  You've put it much better than I could. Basically, the 80s feel like they happened about 100 years ago. Which makes us depressingly old.
- fmbb 2y ago
  The further we get past the year 2000 the more clear it becomes that all the pre-2000 memes of 2000 being the future were right, and not much happened in the west in terms of quality of life or daily conveniences or productivity since 2000.
  - JetSpiegel 2y ago
    The Matrix was right!
vikingerik 2y ago
Yeah. Here's another: Space Invaders is now closer in time to the Gamecube than the Gamecube is to today. Similarly, Windows 95 is now closer in time to the Intel 4004 microprocessor than to today.
- doubled112 2y ago
  I've heard this put as "we're farther in time from the PS2 than the PS2 was from the Atari 2600" It makes you think though. Has the innovation run out of steam?
vidarh 2y ago
What really makes me feel old is realising Jurassic Park is as ancient to my son now as the early 1960's movies my parents would show me from their childhood when I was a kid.
- Negitivefrags 2y ago
  The other day I made a reference to something from Jurassic Park at work to a fresh graduate, and got a blank stare. So I say "You know, from Jurassic Park". And was told "Oh, I've never seen it". I have never felt older than in that moment.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    How's this: if you're over 27 years old, you were born closer to the moon landing than the present day.

scrapheap 2y ago

The Freescape 3D Engine was in use in the 80's (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescape ).

ghurtado 2y ago
Good ol' Driller will always be my first 3D game. The novelty of 3D graphics that were more than the plain wireframes of Elite, was such that we put up with the 1 FPS framerate for hours on end. I wish I could regain some of that wonder back, but all the Raytracing and RTX make it very hard to find.

pjc50 2y ago

I suppose this is where I plug my own 30 year old 3D engine (caution: it's not very good) https://github.com/pjc50/ancient-3d-for-turboc https://github.com/pjc50/ancient-3d-for-turboc

gwern 2y ago

I think that a lot of people feel like this post-COVID, like there's a sort of 'temporal collapse' where you feel stuck in a Big Now where Now never changes, no matter how many days do, and the pounds accumulate but not the years... I wonder if there's something to how delayed careers and life progression, and the shift to streaming/recommendation heavy media, and the apparent 'stuckness' of culture, all contribute to this feeling of being unmoored in time and being unable to realize intuitively that '30 years ago was 1994'? I've been experimenting on my website with automatically adding to all years or dates a little subscript like '5ya'. While I thought it was clunky at first, I'm finding it helpful to be regularly reminded that when I mention something that happened in '2003', that really was '21 years ago', and I feel a little less like Billy Pilgrim.

fluoridation 2y ago
I did feel like that for the first couple years, but I feel like it's a separate effect from feeling like it's still 2000.