Amazing Developments from Handhelds to Consoles and PC's by Dr. Jon Peddie ( Jon Peddie Research)
"Gaming is everywhere, and how with mobile devices we can play them 24/7."
Our next talk was taken by Dr. Jon Peddie and was an introduction to how gaming has become a huge part of our lives and how they are now with us all the time due to the advancements in mobile technology. He went through with us about the history of gaming and hoe it has been influenced by CG and the advancement in GPU systems.
CG is the result of multiple paths, time lines and stories throughout the last couple of decades. Maths was the foundation and this is where we began to find the formula to be able to build a virtual model of a triangle. There is an awful lot of maths behind it and this involves looking at different shapes and figure out how they were created.
There were many different devices through history that were able to bring about the new age of technology and below are a few.of the more well known and influential in the process of creating these new techniques of creating games.
- The Antikythera Device 82BCE
- The Jaquard Loom 1805
- The Difference Engine 1833
- Zuze Z1 1941
- ENIAV 1947
- Whirlwind 1950
This was the start of CG.
But while these were all influential the real start of CG was the TU 85 which was atomic bombs. So, America built a military Whirlwind to atop it, using SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) to stop the bombings. They had an amazing screen that can see what aircraft is coming in so they could look for bombs and determine whether it was a friendly or enemy plane. This system was also the basis for all air traffic control systems and the graphical basis for video games.
But this was not a linear path and there were many different ways in which we got to where we are now that involve many different people. One of the first computer games was about trying to calculate how to get a bouncing ball down a hole and this was generally it, and even the first video games made didn't even have graphics.
Then in 1983 the first 3D game was made which was iRobot and it took a further nine years to make the first game (Wolfenstein) which was a first person shooter and that was in 1992. So now, 22 years later we see games like Battlefield 4, running at up to 60 fps and with a HD resolution at 1080p.
So, we ask ourselves, how did we get here? Well mainly hardware, but it is also down to transistors and the GPU processing power that is 27x faster than if we were still using CPU. We can then look to compare the PC against consoles. Now we may think that console graphics are incredible but they are nothing compared to the processing power of the PC. While the PC is slowly increasing its capabilities every year the manufacturer's of console games have to flat line there production every year for a few years in order to maintain the look of games and so that players can distinguish the difference between older models and the newer ones, forcing them to buy the next upgrade quicker.
We can also say the same about mobiles and their ever advancing technology. We know that they are never going to be as powerful as the PC or consoles but they give it there beat shots with the limitations that mobile has, but in all fairness there isn't much difference, in fact it usually comes down to specular reflections, meaning that there is actually only a small difference.
Lastly on these lines we can then look at virtual reality and how this has changed peoples gaming experiences. The first VR was the Sensorama, created all the way back in 1957, you were stationary and it allowed you to look around a virtual world, but you would have to hold a bar to prevent you from falling over. But once again VR has come along since and last year the Oculas Rift was introduced includes two separate GPU's per headset, which is an extraordinary amount of processing power but is capable of producing world's in front of you which can walk around using special shows that slide around a giant plate that you stand on, meaning that you actually exercise at the same time.
Overall the talk was interesting and not what I expected. I learnt a lot about the history of gaming and how today's platform have been influenced by ones from as far back as the 40s that were never intended to be for gaming but for detecting bombs on planes. It was fascinating to know that companies where still using this software for developing games years after still and its interesting to know where gaming actually started.
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