Recent content by fearsomepirate

How many GPUs are sold to individuals vs computer companies? I strongly suspect the overall decline in PC sales is part of this. And this decline in turn is due to increasing life cycles crawling up market into gaming. I remember we got a new 286 in 1989. 3 years later, Windows 3.1 wouldn't even...

I wonder how much of it is due to chip makers overshooting the market. A lot of games are still being made with the PS4/XB1 as the base platform, the top GPUs on steam are mostly 5-6 years old, and many of the top games on Steam are even older. The integrated Radeon GPU on my laptop can handle...

It makes sense, because they're completely different applications with completely different markets. The programming APIs aren't even the same - I mean, doubt Intel's going to replace D3D with SYCL and oneAPI.

The point is to give people a meaningful way to think about what "diminishing returns" actually means (i.e. the "return" is the customer's experience, not how realistically sweat is rendered on a warrior's skin), especially as there are apparently still people who think on-screen pixel counts...

More: In DOS2, your party is always walking around in a "cluster" formation. The combat engine, however, is a turn-based tactical game that has a lot in common with games like X-COM or Fire Emblem. It's a very well-done engine; however, your primary way of engaging combat is "talk to NPC -> NPC...

Right, and if you're into automotive engineering, you can give a big list of technologies that make a new mid-sized sedan in 2018 different from one in 2003. The list is huge! Yet if you took an ordinary customer, and told him to take like-new sedans from 1988, 2003, and 2018 for test drives...

Oh at DOS2 really likes "gotcha" fights where you get surprise-attacked, hit with AoE, get at least one party member stunned or killed, and will probably take a TPK if you don't reload the fight after knowing where bad guys appear. Also, eventually, everything flies. Dogs, tar slugs, heavily...

I got a high-end gaming PC last Black Friday. I don't even know what to run on it. Divinity: Original Sin 2 looks pretty good on max settings, but you know what, so does Witcher 3 on my launch PS4. And that's a 4-year-old machine. 4 years just ain't what it used to be. Between the Nintendo 64...

You're counting effects. Consumers don't judge quality by counting up features, then comparing who has the longest list. And my point is that the impact this has on visual quality is lower and lower relative to time. Diminishing returns is not "more investment leads to NO improvement." It's...

What you're talking about are all inputs to creating the final experience. A customer does not actually see pixels, HDR lighting, polygon transformations, etc. He sees Geralt of Rivia riding his horse through the forest. The technology is an input to creating the customer experience. Most people...

Ah, I should also add that I intensely dislike gear treadmills. I much prefer systems where I can upgrade and modify my favorite gear rather than Soul-Devourer: Blade of Chaos Level 5 needing to be replaced at some point by Basic Sword Level 9.

"Diminishing returns" is a quantitative idea, so it kind of implies the question...how do we quantify this? I came up with a thought experiment that I think could quantify it. Get a bunch of screenshots going all the way back to the Atari 2600, photographs, and artistic works (sketches...

It is. Critical acclaim is no shield from the scorn of the fearsome pirate, however. I'm the guy who thought Silent Hill 2 was arguably the most overrated game of the entire Playstation generation. Walking to story nodes so I can click through dialog and get to the next thing I'm supposed to...

Call of Duty: Black Ops was baaaaarely better than SD resolution on the PS3, and it blew out everything else sales that year. Pixel-counters aren't a significant fraction of the game-buying public.

Burnout 3 (OXbox) : Has aged extremely well. Of course the graphics are dated, but this game is pure fun. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PS2) : I skipped this when it came out because it looked like a total affront to Sands of Time. In fact, it's...a total affront to Sands of Time. The first...