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[DonMigs85]

Metroid Prime's texture resolution looks a lot worse today, as well as the low overall geometry, but it still looks fairly decent overall. The 60fps and flashy lighting helped save it.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

The water in Morrowind on Pc blew my mind...

Everything in Max Payne.

Look at his face! And his jacket! And the gun! Oh my goodness, it all looks so real!

The bump mapped walls in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion starting cell.

Yep.

 

[Doomshroom]

ok i got this one.

Me and my friend were playing last ninja one the Commodore 64 on my birthday just before the party and i remeber we said. We cant play this when the girls come it looks to realistic and they could not handle the graphics.

 

[Proelite]

The rain level in Gears of War.

Barf.

 

[cwistofu]

Jiggling boobs.

 

[antitrop]

Perfect Dark Zero in 2005 was the first time I had ever seen Parallax Occlusion Mapping in a game before. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but God damn did those walls and floors ever look good. It was the only thing about the game that looked good.

 

[disappeared]

This was kind of a 50/50 split. On one hand it served the game's plot and general setting, but on the other it was clearly/cleverly used to mask pop-in and the loading of geometry in what was essentially an open world.

It was a very impressive effect for 1999, but not without its flaws.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Tekken on psx, battle arena toshinden as well

 

[Glix]

Almost everything about the first section of the PS1 game One

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dbBVeFJSgeQ

 

[BakedTanooki]

When characters had a real shadow, which interacts with the environment, not just a shadow which looks like a circle.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Didn't halo use texture streaming thanks to the built in HDD of the xbox?

As you got closer to surfaces the textures were replaced with higher and higher res ones from what I remember

And yeah it was mighty impressive at the time.



Ambient occlusion is the big one for me, first time I saw well implemented AO (in mafia 2) it blew my mind.

http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/mafia-2/artikel/technik_vorschau_mafia_2,43581,2316352,2.html

It's not unimpressive today I mean games look like shit without it, but I'm just so used to it.
Voxel based AO like in rottr is the next step and seems to produce impressive results though.


Another one is screenspace relfections.
First time I saw it in killzone shadowfall it really impressed me, but the more it's used in games the more obvious its limitations became and the more the illusion is broken to the point that I don't even like it anymore.

PBR

I remember seeing this museum tech demo and it being mind blowing, especially how convincing the metal and lens on the camera and robot looked

It's not even been 3 years and we're already used to it and this demo doesn't even look impressive anymore, but simply having metal look like metal , marble like marble, wood like wood and leather like leather (instead of everything either looking like clay or plastic) is huge.

 

[DanteRavenkin]

The water in Morrowind on Pc blew my mind...

This is exactly what I came to post, except for Xbox. I would actually stare at the water for ages and try to match up the reflections

 

[Chris_Rivera]

The motion blur in the Motorstorm demo on PS3 impressed me, I didn't even know what "motion blur" was at the time. I think the Crysis demo was the first time I saw depth of field effects in games.

 

[fhqwhgads]

I would've said the water in Mario Sunshine, but honestly the water in that game looks just as good as the water does in games these days.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

SegaCD full motion video games.

The fog in Call of Duty 2.

The parallax mapping in Kameo: Elements of Power

 

[artsi]

I don't remember which game was the first, but at one point dynamic shadows or ragdoll models felt really "next gen".

 

[FlyinJ]

the water in baldur's gate dark alliance

It still looks pretty awesome. I just re-played it about a year ago.

 

[Rektash]

Summons in most Final Fantasy games up to like VIII !

I was always like "Holy shit, this is like a movie!"

 

[disappeared]

Summons in most Final Fantasy games up to like VIII !

I was always like "Holy shit, this is like a movie!"

I remember some of those utterly crippling the game's framerate.

Or was that FFVII? Maybe both. Can't remember.

 

[Menitta]

Reverse answer: I can feel it coming, but I still find the detailed reflection of a ground super impressive.

Also everything in this imgur album is still super impressive: http://imgur.com/gallery/GPlx4

 

[HTupolev]

Didn't halo use texture streaming thanks to the built in HDD of the xbox?

As you got closer to surfaces the textures were replaced with higher and higher res ones from what I remember

I don't think so. Environment assets are totally stable-looking, with no LOD popping. Bungie did use the HDD to cache level data so that load zones only caused brief stutters*, and I think they also said they used it in their oXbox games to cache sounds, allowing them to have the huge number of audio permutations.
Incidentally, the sound thing was still an issue on 360; they've said that if you play Halo 3 without a hard drive, the game doesn't provide as many audio permutations.

Halo 2 definitely streams things in dynamically, though. The popping is quite obvious, especially in cutscenes.

*It also means that you can reload the last level you played on, from cold boot, in less than thirty seconds.

 

[abracadaver]

On phone so no pictures

- Explosions in Duke 3D
- Gibbing enemies in Quake 1
- Breaking glass in HL2
- Physics in HL2 and Max Payne 2

 

[Alo81]

Perfect Dark Zero in 2005 was the first time I had ever seen Parallax Occlusion Mapping in a game before. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but God damn did those walls and floors ever look good. It was the only thing about the game that looked good.

Maaaaan I still like the POM in PDZ.

 

[Glass Shark]

I've never been particularly impressed by graphics in games.

 

[BFIB]

The rain at the beginning of A Link to the Past.

 

[FatboyTim]

The 12 levels of parallax scrolling in Shadow of the Beast, on the Commodore Amiga in 1989:

The (brutally hard) game also featured an amazing soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKyB51o9AJg

Simply jaw dropping for the time.

 

[MastaKilla]

Nathan Drake's wet pants

 

[TheYanger]

I can't find any good images to do it justice, but the bump mapping in Halo 1 blew me away, I don't think I'd seen the technique before. The grass was another high point, but bump mapping made shit feel like it had so many extra polys that it made the xbox seem like it REALLY popped visually next to the ps2 and Dreamcast I had. The flashlight really amplified it too. I remember just staring at the walls and floors the first time you go onto the Covenant ship in the...third? level.

The bump mapped walls in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion starting cell.

Like, to me, this looks the same or worse than the Halo 1 bump maps, and it was a full gen later

 

[hughesta]

Oh yeah, the smoke grenades in COD2 blew my mind when the 360 launched. I never thought games would look better than that.

 

[Zoidberg Jesus]

I remember reading a Nintendo Power sometime before the Gamecube came out, and it had a screenshot of Mario in Super Smash Bros Melee. I was super impressed at the time by the fact that his overalls had a corduroy texture and they weren't just solid blue. I was about 9 years old then.

 

[Feep]

Rain, frost, and this were all pretty cool to see on the visor.

 

[TheMagician]

A water fall in the first Turok.

I didn't think water in games could ever look better.

 

[DJ_Lae]

Perfect Dark Zero in 2005 was the first time I had ever seen Parallax Occlusion Mapping in a game before. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but God damn did those walls and floors ever look good. It was the only thing about the game that looked good.

It's a bit exaggerated an effect when looking at it now, but I still love it.

 

[Squishy3]

I can't find any good images to do it justice, but the bump mapping in Halo 1 blew me away, I don't think I'd seen the technique before. The grass was another high point, but bump mapping made shit feel like it had so many extra polys that it made the xbox seem like it REALLY popped visually next to the ps2 and Dreamcast I had. The flashlight really amplified it too. I remember just staring at the walls and floors the first time you go onto the Covenant ship in the...third? level.



Like, to me, this looks the same or worse than the Halo 1 bump maps, and it was a full gen later

The Halo 1 bump maps are really good, I agree.

 

[CitizenCope]

Pilot Wings.
"I'm flying!!"

 

[GamerJM]

This is still impressive.

 

[Peltz]

The 12 levels of parallax scrolling in Shadow of the Beast, on the Commodore Amiga in 1989:

The (brutally hard) game also featured an amazing soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKyB51o9AJg

Simply jaw dropping for the time.

Those scrolling clouds still look cool when there's a clearing in the trees.

 

[RiZ III]

The explosions in Lost Planet. They still look better than explosions in most games.

 

[bobbychalkers]

Killzone looked impossible to me at one point but now I can see right through its tricks

 

[A-V-B]

One that sticks out for me, of this nature, is the way they implemented bullet damage in FEAR.

I thought it was pretty fucking rad.

 

[jonjonaug]

This is still pretty darn neat.

The rain level in Gears of War.


Barf.

That looked bad when it came out.

 

[Lomax]

Baked in shadows blew my mind, I remember especially Killer Instinct in the arcade I would stare at the shadows because they actually looked right instead of just being a blob.

 

[Mcdohl]

Spoiler

Yep, teenage me.

But in general, FF FMVs blew my mind.

 

[jufonuk]

I'm sure Alan Wake will not look so good now.

 

[Daingurse]

Lens flare lol. Used to eat that effect up. God Rays/Light Shafts are like the new Lens Flare for me.

 

[malboroking]

I remember some of those utterly crippling the game's framerate.

Or was that FFVII? Maybe both. Can't remember.

I don't remember any summon from any of the PSX FFs crippling the framerate. The games ran at 15 FPS in the battles, so it couldn't have gotten much worse anyways =P

 

[blame space]

yeah I was gonna say lens flare in ocarina of time.

 

[Ephidel]

I remember playing through the ZOE 2nd Runner demo a ton of times because I was so impressed by the snow but I can't seem to find any screenshots to post here.

 

[HTupolev]

I can't find any good images to do it justice, but the bump mapping in Halo 1 blew me away, I don't think I'd seen the technique before. The grass was another high point, but bump mapping made shit feel like it had so many extra polys that it made the xbox seem like it REALLY popped visually next to the ps2 and Dreamcast I had. The flashlight really amplified it too. I remember just staring at the walls and floors the first time you go onto the Covenant ship in the...third? level.

Yeah, Halo 1's normal mapped environments are nuts. They've got a pretty complex lighting model including (greyscale) specular from major dynamic lights, and the tiled nature of the synthetic surfaces allowed them to make the textures extremely sharp.

...Halo 1 also filters the normal maps, which massively reduces shader aliasing compared to a lot of PS360 games, at the cost of making surfaces appear smooth as you get more distanced from them. Sometimes this smoothing effect can break the "look" of a material, but because most of these surfaces are using the normal maps to represent large clean etches on smooth-ish surfaces, it sort of doesn't.

 

[malboroking]

I've never been particularly impressed by graphics in games.

What is the point of this? To show how above it all you are?