I don’t get how making calculations faster can make games look so much better now as compared to say 20 years ago.
In: 0
All graphics are just picture files. As you move through a game, those files have to be constantly loaded and unloaded. Small files take less processing power to load and unload but, due to their size, also lack detail. Larger files are harder to load and unload but have more detail.
From a pure user side perspective, faster computers can load and unload larger files more easily so you get better graphics. There is quite a lot more to it than that on the back side.
It might help to know that when you’re looking at graphics on a screen, you’re basically looking at the results of what are probably millions or billions of mathematical computations. It’s not just the math used to calculate trajectories, but math is used to do things like figure out where the light from a light source will go. Where light illuminates, reflects, or is absorbed. Everything about shading is part of some calculation.
The main difference between being able to do more calculations in the same time, meaning a faster computer, console, Etc, or only being able to do fewer, is how much of these computations can you complete before you need to draw the next frame. You can only do so many, because the hardware is only so fast. If you can do more, you can get better light, better shading, better textures on surfaces, which are often mathematically created, and higher frame rates.
And there’s really a lot more. But the bottom line is the computer can do more work in the same time, and that work is being used to get more detail into a frame, and more frames into a second.
Better graphics mean more detail and more complex effects. Every detail and every effect needs to be computed in a short enough time for each frame (so, in 1/60th to 1/30th of a second). Rendering a model with 20 polygons is easier than rendering a model with 2000 polygons. Calculating the approximate light level in the area is easier than calculating exactly how the shadow of this 2000-polygon model will fall onto the environment. And so on. The faster the computers get, the more of these calculations you can fit into 1/60th of a second. Methods also improve, but that’s a different story.
Latest Answers