I pick things up
I am a collector
And things, well things
They tend to accumulate
I have this net
It drags behind me
It picks up hobbies
For me to feed upon



Seeing more and more games with late 90s/early 2000s type graphics. I assume we will skip recreating the Brown Sludge era but regardless I wonder what people are going to obsess over once graphics are Done. Like once we have fully real time raytracing all that’s left to do is to look back over the last several decades and start appreciating everything each era and graphical style has to offer without the brainworm of technological progress telling us anything old is useless and bad. Obviously a lot of people are already doing this but once we stop coming out with new graphics everything, including raytracing, will crystallize into “what was” and everyone will be forced to live and explore that landscape because there won’t be a new best thing to cling to. Either that or they stick with raytracing, get bored and give up, or come up with idk, a new coordinate system where Z is anti-spinward, just to get that hit of something new. Just one more graphics bro just one more I swear bro this is the last graphics we need to make games art bro I swear just one more graphics please bro


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in reply to @sarksus's post:

it is cool though that appreciation for earlier-era aesthetics is also informing how folks use new graphics technology, like that demo using the natural graininess of low-iter-count path tracing to recreate the 90s camcorder aesthetic

Ooh, could you link that? Not sure if I’ve seen it. But yeah, I agree! Like when someone makes a PS1 throwback they are often not recreating PS1 graphics perfectly because that isn’t the point. They are taking pieces that make sense and are pleasing and combining them with more modern techniques and it ends up looking really nice. Also it’s a fun way to learn more about these historical styles and techniques and exploring them outside of “ok we gotta ship this shit these are the tools we have just finish the game”.

Omg that’s beautiful. Like it fits so well thanks to the VHS aesthetic you wouldn’t even realize it’s an “imperfection”, and combined with the realistic lighting it creates such a surreal feeling.