Why does a computer run a game poorly, but is able to show a video of it perfectly fine

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Why does a computer run a game poorly, but is able to show a video of it perfectly fine

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Hyper simple: A computer takes longer to draw a video game because it has to draw that image from scratch. A video is just showing you images that were already drawn.

More complex: A video is a series of images. Your computer doesn’t have to know what’s in those images, just what color each pixel is. It has the benefit of being able to load up each image in advance, each frame of the video, because those images aren’t going to change from one replay to the next.

When you’re playing a game, each image is being drawn by the computer for the first time as you play. It has to do this because you’re hitting buttons that change what the next image will look like. Instead of just knowing what pixel is what color, your computer has to know what every object on the screen looks like, what shape it is, how to color it in. It has to know where the light sources are, and how the light bounces off of objects to create highlights and shadows. The computer has to figure out all this stuff, and uses that information to draw the next frame. Then and only then does it know which pixel is supposed to be which color. Then it has to start all over again for the next frame.

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