20 years since 2004. The greatest step forward in PC gaming?

Curlyriff said:
Distance, echos and object obscurity to sound is literally in games now. I'm not sure it makes any difference if it hardware or software. Onboard sound now from a Mobo is better than those older sound cards from the early 2000s anyways.

3D positioning has been the best it has ever been with ability to create true 3D audio space through software in game engine as required. I have honestly no idea what you are on about and really just seem to want things to be as your rose tinted glasses push. It's honestly maddening.

Hunt:showdown and Hellblade are excellent with directional sound. DTS:X utilised in Witcher 3 again is really good if you have sound system/headphones for it.
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Onboard sound are all pretty crappy. I doubt they are even better than a dedicated soundcard from the 00s. The Xonar cards must be over 10 years old now and they are still far better than anything onboard, especially for headphones. The modern options are external DACs ofc as they are self contained and more convenient

Onboard ones lack the physical components, they are emulators basically.
 
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Nasher said:
Onboard sound are all pretty crappy. I doubt they are even better than a dedicated soundcard from the 00s. The Xonar cards must be over 10 years old now and they are still far better than anything onboard, especially for headphones. The modern options are external DACs ofc as they are self contained and more convenient

Onboard ones lack the physical components, they are emulators basically.
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The Xonar cards from a decade ago yes are better. The 2000s was 20yrs ago. Those really are not better.

With that, you can still A) still get sound cards now if you want B) use a DAC as you noted. These both don't change that sound in games are better than they were 20yrs ago. I don't believe this changes though as you noted the fact that game sounds have improved. Propagation of sounds, the quality of recorded real sound such as vehicle sounds in racing games etc. There have been significant advancements you just seem to dismiss because the games themselves for you are not as good as the 2000s.

I prefer the games noted in the OP compared to most modern titles but that doesn't mean I can't see the advancements in graphics, audio and AI compared to then. Purely that a lot of ideas of originality are done and more and more we are getting variation on things before. There is a realistic limit to what can be noted as original. The first time FPS games were done like Quake and Doom etc are original but then every other FPS is then a variation over time and so dilutes that originality so 20-30yrs of those games means they start to feel similar etc.

That is the hardest reality of game design in current times. How do you make something unique. Stories in terms of characters and locations might be different but a zombie game, a fantasy game, horror, military shooter etc. They are all done so the unique part is trying to make the story that has a generic starting point feel unique. TV shows and such have the same issue because the market is saturated.

There are still games that do feel unique or the story comes out and is different as per some of the games mentioned in this thread but they are few and far between.
 
I don't think I've been more blown away than the introduction of physics, which HL2 blew the doors wide open with. I'm sure there's probably some other obscure games that had a version of physics earlier than HL2, but that's the one for me personally that I remember most.
 
As for sound, recent software sound in games has just about got us back to what an XFi with macrofx and elevation filter was capable of in terms of 3d audio back in 2005, before Microsoft killed of Directsound3d with the introduction of Windows Vista.

A properly set up X-Fi using headphones or quadrophonic speakers in Windows XP could produce positional sound on par with what Dolby Atmos and DTS:X have only just started to give us back now. It was 3d, object based and included convincing elevation effects. Of course that came from tech Creative acquired from Aureal and was also present in their older soundcards.

Ironically if you ran an X-fi in 5.1 or 7.1 (which many did) it disabled object based sound with elevation effects.
 
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There are many, many aspects to PC gaming/sims. As a space geek in 2004 I found EagleLander3D and thought it was amazing. 20 years later I'm looking for a better Apollo Lunar Module simulator and there's Orbiter/NASSP or Reentry..... are these better or more detailed...... no!
So, to be able to land at the Apollo 11, 12 15 or 17 landing sites then a 20 year old program is still the best thing available.
 
Smeghead said:
I don't think I've been more blown away than the introduction of physics, which HL2 blew the doors wide open with. I'm sure there's probably some other obscure games that had a version of physics earlier than HL2, but that's the one for me personally that I remember most.
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it doesn't look much now but (apart from elite dangerous in VR which I often bang on about) half life one was one game which blew me away .....

I remember being so impressed just on that monorail intro at the start

another "wow" moment for me was in ...... 1995/6 when we had hired a playstation from.... blockbuster I think and I fired up ridge racer.

it was like having an arcade machine in my home (in truth if you compare them now, not quite!). but it wasn't far of.

of course now most of our pcs blow arcade games out of the water but that was not the case in the 1990s

I played that game so much.... and eventually beat the "black" car which even if I say so myself was quite a feat
 
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Just think how advanced games would be today if consoles didnt exist and everyone bought desktops with (or without) a wireless controller
 
malachi said:
1996 when 3DFX first released the Voodoo GPU. Took games such as Half-life to another level.
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I would have to agree, it took games like Quake to a whole new level - not just the novelty of proper 3d, but also playing at a smooth frame rate.

People that complain about games being unplayable when they aren't a smooth 60fps really have no idea now good they have it :cry: Before 3D cards, we'd be thrilled if we were getting 20fps (and screen tear was just something you accepted!)
 
willhub said:
Unreal Tournament 2004, I remember buying it, was so enjoyable, I loved UT2003 until I realised they are all bots and that's why the "people" had 0 ping.
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Loved those games, especially as you could use voice to give them commands like defend/attack or capture the flag etc. Would love another UT game that included bot support.
 
Steviepunk said:
I would have to agree, it took games like Quake to a whole new level - not just the novelty of proper 3d, but also playing at a smooth frame rate.

People that complain about games being unplayable when they aren't a smooth 60fps really have no idea now good they have it :cry: Before 3D cards, we'd be thrilled if we were getting 20fps (and screen tear was just something you accepted!)
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20fps? that was luxury.

i used to play (and enjoy) Geoff Crammonds F1GP, which on a stock A500 ran at 8fps iirc. things improved on the A1200 but still only talking maybe 15fps.

nowadays however i cant play racing games at 30fps. Colin mcrae Dirt 2 on the xbox 360 looked amazing but at a locked 30fps made me feel ill..... on pc at 60fps it was fine.
 
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Borsch said:
VR. I may have cooled off on it and have not owned a headset for a couple of years now, but experiencing Oculus CV1 demos for the first time on my 1080ti - the one with a dinosaur, vertigo inducing rooftop and macro photo of a fly - was jaw dropping on a scale beyond whatever happened in mid-late 2000s.
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My number one gaming memory after 3dfx is the cv1. Playing rec room quests with friends, next level!!!
 
Ignoring the popular FPS games from in around 2002-2005

Max payne 1/2,
MGS 2 / 3 snake eater (PS2 though)
Splinter cell games (1/PT/CT)
Hitman games
Tiger Woods 2004
NFS Underground 1/2
GTA 3/Vice City /San Andreas

Good times
 
BubbySoup said:
Rather than a game I'm going to go for Steam. It revolutionised delivery of PC games.
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all hail valve and steam the company who stopped us owning our games and made it so they could remove our entire library and us not have a leg to stand on :/

valve have made some good games but personally I totally disagree that steam is a good think for the customer.
 
i dont consider 2004 anything special.
The first 3d graphics cards though, now that was a revolution.
What was only possible in arcades now on a monitor - it was crazy the shear power upgrade. To go to something hundreds of times more powerful in an instant!

Also the other benefits - the PS1 didn't even have bilinear filtering or mip mapping. It looked garbage compared to pc.
 
Borsch said:
VR. I may have cooled off on it and have not owned a headset for a couple of years now, but experiencing Oculus CV1 demos for the first time on my 1080ti - the one with a dinosaur, vertigo inducing rooftop and macro photo of a fly - was jaw dropping on a scale beyond whatever happened in mid-late 2000s.
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I am with you on this. VR has given me more WOW moments than I have had in all my previous years of gaming combined. The Dreamdeck demos that you mention were exactly as you describe, jaw dropping. So was starting Elite Dangerous and seeing my ship in the hanger for the first time. The scale of it. Robo Recall in the intro when you are watching the news and all the robots turn to look at you. That's one scary moment right there. Made all the more real by VR. VR is so good that I have unable to play Alien Isolation long enough to get to the point where you meet the Alien.
 
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