Why does a computer need a dedicated graphics card for high-graphics video games, but can play 4K quality video without one?
In: Technology
Because playing back pre-made video data is incredibly easy. Even old computers can do that, it’s just a case of having enough bandwidth to push the pixel data down, for the most part. There is some decompression required, but on a modern computer that’s nothing nowadays.
However, a 3D world is rendered… it’s literally created on-the-fly from millions of tiny objects, each with a different texture, colour, pattern, interaction (e.g. transparency, reflection, “dullness”, etc.) and dozens of light sources all moving around.
It’s the difference between me putting paintings into a van without stopping, and me painting them fast enough that someone could load a van with paintings constantly without ever stopping. And if you want those paintings to look “comparable” to a video of a real person or game, then those paintings have to be created very, very well and extremely fast for it to work.
And that takes a whole lot more skill and effort than just loading a few pre-made paintings into a van.
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