5 ms·

I remember the analogue to this in unreal engine 1, zones i believe, same concept though, good years.

markus_zhang 2y ago
Does anyone know why Unreal Engine 1 runs pretty smooth but with far superior graphics? Or maybe it is not that superior as I thought? I remember went into a netbar in 1998 when it came out and was COMPLETELY blown away -- and that PC didn't even have a good graphics card so it's choppy.
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago
  Newer temporal rendering techniques result in lower quality frames and output when the prevailing art style of the game is not one that is photorealistic. There's a lot of "smearing" as a result. It's not just you, it's how newer rendering techniques in the Unreal Engine end up being perceived by most people.
- chickenzzzzu 2y ago
  I'm thinking it's likely the number of supported colors and integer vs floating point precision. You'll notice that quake textures are very similar to PS1 textures in that they are pixelated and use a limited number of colors, whereas N64 textures have more of a smooth gradient. Likely also there are differences in the lighting systems as well. This is why I think people compare Quake II or even Quake III Arena to UE1. The OG quake really was a hack just to be the first that did 6 degrees of freedom textured 3D graphics on a PC, which I think they were the first for those exact constraints. My history is a little fuzzy, SEGA certainly had them beat by multiple years on arcade boards but those were all custom, and other games that had 6 degrees of freedom were not textured. It was a busy time !
  - whaleofatw2022 2y ago
    Descent had textures, although they were arguably not-even-ps1 quality and there were probably some things still flat shaded.
    - chickenzzzzu 2y ago
      Nice, I checked out some screenshots, still looks very compelling :) Nothing wrong with flat/emission/background/basic/straight color shading, a concept for which I've heard a thousand terms now.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  The original Unreal had great graphics for the time but did require a very beefy machine.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Ah I wish they open sourced the UE1 engine. I know some of the OldUnreal community members get to see the source code and made patches for it as well as migrated the UT editor to it, which is way better than the original VB one.
- dahart 2y ago
  I’d be curious if you can find some examples of superior UE1 graphics compared to the best of what you can find in UE5. If your question is based on your memory from 98, I would assume the answer is that UE1 graphics is not superior to today’s, but things that look good today are less surprising than they were then. I just googled UE1 images, and everything I saw in several pages of results looks rather dated to my eyes. If you’re thinking more about the smoothness & framerate of the game, then that’s entirely subjective. UE1 did not prevent choppiness or make things fast, and neither does UE5. That’s entirely at the discretion of the game developer. If you use fewer polygons and use simple shaders, the game will be fast and smooth. If you use more than the hardware & engine can handle, then your game will be choppy. There are a lot of advancements in real-time lighting today, which means that the look doesn’t necessarily change, but is computed at run time. Most of the nice lighting in UE1 was baked into textures or vertex data, and could not change during the game. Today with shaders and global illumination algorithms running in real-time, the lighting can change in response to a moving sun, moving objects & characters, changing materials, etc.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Er, I was thinking about UE1 versus Quake 2, definitely not UE5.
    - dahart 2y ago
      Ah I misunderstood. Maybe that is just down to game quality & art style?

Does anyone know why Unreal Engine 1 runs pretty smooth but with far superior graphics? Or maybe it is not that superior as I thought? I remember went into a netbar in 1998 when it came out and was COMPLETELY blown away -- and that PC didn't even have a good graphics card so it's choppy.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago
Newer temporal rendering techniques result in lower quality frames and output when the prevailing art style of the game is not one that is photorealistic. There's a lot of "smearing" as a result. It's not just you, it's how newer rendering techniques in the Unreal Engine end up being perceived by most people.
chickenzzzzu 2y ago
I'm thinking it's likely the number of supported colors and integer vs floating point precision. You'll notice that quake textures are very similar to PS1 textures in that they are pixelated and use a limited number of colors, whereas N64 textures have more of a smooth gradient. Likely also there are differences in the lighting systems as well. This is why I think people compare Quake II or even Quake III Arena to UE1. The OG quake really was a hack just to be the first that did 6 degrees of freedom textured 3D graphics on a PC, which I think they were the first for those exact constraints. My history is a little fuzzy, SEGA certainly had them beat by multiple years on arcade boards but those were all custom, and other games that had 6 degrees of freedom were not textured. It was a busy time !
- whaleofatw2022 2y ago
  Descent had textures, although they were arguably not-even-ps1 quality and there were probably some things still flat shaded.
  - chickenzzzzu 2y ago
    Nice, I checked out some screenshots, still looks very compelling :) Nothing wrong with flat/emission/background/basic/straight color shading, a concept for which I've heard a thousand terms now.
Sharlin 2y ago
The original Unreal had great graphics for the time but did require a very beefy machine.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Ah I wish they open sourced the UE1 engine. I know some of the OldUnreal community members get to see the source code and made patches for it as well as migrated the UT editor to it, which is way better than the original VB one.
dahart 2y ago
I’d be curious if you can find some examples of superior UE1 graphics compared to the best of what you can find in UE5. If your question is based on your memory from 98, I would assume the answer is that UE1 graphics is not superior to today’s, but things that look good today are less surprising than they were then. I just googled UE1 images, and everything I saw in several pages of results looks rather dated to my eyes. If you’re thinking more about the smoothness & framerate of the game, then that’s entirely subjective. UE1 did not prevent choppiness or make things fast, and neither does UE5. That’s entirely at the discretion of the game developer. If you use fewer polygons and use simple shaders, the game will be fast and smooth. If you use more than the hardware & engine can handle, then your game will be choppy. There are a lot of advancements in real-time lighting today, which means that the look doesn’t necessarily change, but is computed at run time. Most of the nice lighting in UE1 was baked into textures or vertex data, and could not change during the game. Today with shaders and global illumination algorithms running in real-time, the lighting can change in response to a moving sun, moving objects & characters, changing materials, etc.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Er, I was thinking about UE1 versus Quake 2, definitely not UE5.
  - dahart 2y ago
    Ah I misunderstood. Maybe that is just down to game quality & art style?