Here Im mostly asking about PC games, as the full 3d era in console gaming was pretty much started with the PS1 launch (December 1994) and the N64 launch (September 1996).
Case in point is two of my favourite games, Star Wars Dark Forces (February 1995), and Dark Forces 2 (October 1997), pretty much the same formula, but totally different technical capabilities.
Dark Forces was solidly lumped in with the Doom era of games, being 2.5D. Basically the environment was 3D, enemies were rendered by a 2d billboard sprite, and for Dooms case, all levels were essentially on a 2D grid, with the appearance of raised ceilings and uneven floors essentially kludged into the engine. Dark Forces slightly expanded on this by somehow adding in the ability to have multiple levels (is it only 2 different vertical levels or more?) and the ability to pan looking up and down ([although this again seems to have been a hotfix to an inherent issue in raycasting engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Camera_Rotation_vs_Shearing.gif)).
So then a little under 3 years later Dark Forces 2 is released by the same publisher, you can do pretty much everything you can in a normal game engine, look in any direction, completely 3d environments, and the graphics still look passable even now.
I get that there are some technical hurdles to cover between 2D games and full 3D, particularly without a graphics card (first hitting the market in 1999) to reduce the performance issues with rendering only what is in view (occlusion I think?). What I dont get is how the technical issues were solved so quickly between 1995 and 1997, and in particular why the 2d grid necessity went away so quickly.
In: Technology
There are a few facets to this question.
I will focus on the technical limits and programming techniques used at the time.
Technical :
The physical limitations of processors
The physical limitations of memory storage / retrieval
Programming : (the human factor)
Procedural
Dynamic
Random
For physical limitations of hardware; cpu, memory, etc
We can look to Moore’s law for answers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Basically, the number of transistors in a dense ic doubles every year.
This is, imo, secondary in the answer to the question.
The primary drive being human want over human need.
Example : We did not need a 3d dedicated processor to land on the moon. It certainly would have helped.
Back on point. Cir. 1958
Tennis fo Two
The first game was 2d, static field (world), static sprite / player dimensions with a static player path and predictable dynamic sprite path. Amazing to think that this was done with an analog computer with an oscilloscope display.
It would take 14 years to reproduce this in digital.
Thank you Higginbotham.
From T4T to Pong 14 years elapsed.
From Pong (1972) to the first 2.5d game Interceptor only 3 years had passed.
Side note: Pong also initiated the first patent infringement suit related to what would coin the phrase “art of video games”
What made the leap from Pong to Interceptor possible was the jump in cpu capabilities or more specifically the number of transistors and how many operations per clock cycle, known as frequency, could be attained.
Additionally the introduction of dedicated support processor s.
In the Atari computer line.
It’s what I am more familiar with.
Main cpu is the 6502 support processors are
Pokey and Antic.
POKEY handling input via keyboard, joystick ports, and serial input such as tape or disk drives or modem.
ANTIC dealing with graphics management.
In PCs these are handled by similar components.
The motherboard cpu, math co-processor, North Bridge, South Bridge, and daughter boards; sound card, video card, I/O card etc.
Fast forward to current day and all of the daughter boards and mathematics are combined with the motherboard.
With the ability to override and use dedicated expansion boards.
All of these physical aspects are demonstrated in Moore’s law.
The physical limitations are being expanded on due to the want of better, faster, more realistic gaming experiences.
The side effects of striving to meet this want is a need for better cpu capabilities.
Meeting these demands allows for even better designs for cpus due to advances in material science due to advances in the cpu driven by the desire to have better games.
Which accelerated Moore’s law. Till we hit a material limit again.
Now look at programming techniques.
As cpu capabilities climb programming is advanced due to the increases in memory storage/retrieval and the tools available to programmers.
From static pseudo 3d to actual 3d, only available memory and speed of access was the limiting factor.
With more memory we can increase the complexity of a process. If we can access this faster we can display data faster. If we can display data faster, we can display more complex data.
Note: every pixel displayed is a piece of data stored in an exact spot in memory.
The more memory the merrier.
More complicated displays of data require faster processing so that is why we still have dedicated expansion boards such as Nvidia and AMD GPU cards.
The cards are actually full on computers with thousands of processor cores.
They now deal with all the heavy lifting of the graphical display of data including the mathematics associated with the manipulation of the data.
So now we can build sprites that not only have presence in 2d x, y we can construct a sprite map that has x, y, z with variables in every aspect of x thru y and z.
This enables a player to form a ‘okay’ sign with their hand and another player shoot another sprite ‘bullet’ with its own xyz map through the gap made by the fingers of the player.
A more complicated hit box enabled by more complex integrated circuit design enabled by more precision in design and manufacturing processes enabled by the want of a better, faster game.
Not long from now, the 3d game will need to move from vr headset to a more physical ‘holodeck’ immersion experience.
Thank you quantum computers due to Moore’s law due to want over need.
So basically the answer to the question is;
Available ram and time to display data due to lack of processor capacity.
I hope this helps.
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