parallaxscroll
08-01-2009, 07:55 PM
Evans & Sutherland CT5 Flight Simulator from the 1980s. edit: 1981.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06mbwNg1Vw4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e7_GiCc-HA
As a kid, I remember reading a certain book about military aircraft. I saw a picture of some F-16 flight simulator. This was in the late 80s. It kinda looked how the later-released Falcon 3.0 on PC would look in 1991, but with more polygons and higher resolution. I remember seeing the afterburners of the F-16s being really well-rendered. It was some picture like the following, from the same system/simulator: http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/tree/images/e-s-military.jpghttp://i28.tinypic.com/2r5asus.jpg
I never knew what simulator that was from, or what the title of the book was. I've tried looking on the internet for pictures of old 80s flight simulators, but could never find it, but now I think I have!.
The graphics of this flight simulator kinda looks like a high-end, high-spec version of Namco's 'Polygonizer'/System 21 or SEGA's MODEL 1 flat-shaded polygon-pushing arcade boards-The CT5 military flight simulator obviously has much higher resolution, has much greater polygon performance, than the Namco System 21 & SEGA Model 1 boards. The CT5 also has anti-aliasing, and gouraud shading which Sega's & Namco's early polygon arcade boards lacked. Obviously however, the CT5 simulator does not have the texture-mapping that Namco's System 22 and SEGA's Model 2 boards had. Texture-mapping wasn't around until the mid-to-late 1980s, in high-end simulators & workstations.
Us gamers would always look to the arcades, wishing that home console games could match the incredible graphics of advanced arcade technology. Well, in that same sense, arcade game developers "looked up" to advanced military simulation technology, wishing that arcade games could have the same sort of graphics as high-end simulation and workstation technology! :D
Real-time computer graphics was pretty much invented in the 1960s for the Apollo Lunar Docking Simulator, by General Electric Aerospace, who would later go on to help SEGA develop the Model 1 board of 1992.
Evans & Sutherland advanced the field of real-time CG graphics in the 1970s with gouraud shading, and other advances, for flat-shaded polygons, mostly for the military and airline industry.
Then General Electric Aerospace (later Martin Marietta) further advanced the field by inventing texture-mapping in the 1980s, for military flight & tank simulators.
It was these companies, General Electric Aerospace/Martin Marietta and Evans & Sutheland that provided SEGA and NAMCO with the means for 3D polygon + texture-mapping graphics technologies in the early-mid 1990s with the System 22 and MODEL 2 arcade boards, sometime after Sega & Namco started with flat-shaded polygon graphics with the System 21 and Model 1 boards.
Things follow a general progression from larger/more expensive, to smaller/less expensive. From Military & industry, to Arcade, to home use.
flat-shaded graphics for NASA, military, commercial/industry: 1960s & 1970s.
texture mapped graphics for military & industry: 1980s
flat shaded polygon graphics for arcade games: late 80s, early 90s
texture mapped graphics for arcade games: early-mid 1990s
flat-shaded polygon graphics for consumer console games: early-mid 1990s
texture mapped graphics for console games: mid 1990s
edit: found another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W-qb_jHRhA with more demos of its graphics capability, and interestingly, an important piece of information, the year this simulator was around, *1981* that's 10-11 years before the comparatively low-end Sega/GE Aerospace Model 1 arcade board was introduced, and similarly, roughly a decade before the final revisions of Namco's System 21 board was around.
Evans & Sutherland was ahead of almost everyone, including Silicon Graphics, during the 1980s. If you saw high-end SGI workstations of the 80s in action, they would be at a lower level than E&S simulators. Only one company in the world could match the graphics prowess of E&S, and that was General Electric Aerospace, that was bought out by Martin Marietta in 1993, and merged with Lockheed in 1995 to form Lockheed-Martin, and they setup a company called Real3D in 1995. Two great rivals in computer graphics, Evans & Sutherland and GE Aerospace/Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin/Real3D, from the late 1960s, through the 1970s and 1980s, into the 1990s. Each of these two great rivals in computer graphics would help two competing arcade giants in the 90s: Namco and SEGA, with their arcade hardware powering many of the games we loved then, and now.
I hope this post is of some interest, to some of you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06mbwNg1Vw4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e7_GiCc-HA
As a kid, I remember reading a certain book about military aircraft. I saw a picture of some F-16 flight simulator. This was in the late 80s. It kinda looked how the later-released Falcon 3.0 on PC would look in 1991, but with more polygons and higher resolution. I remember seeing the afterburners of the F-16s being really well-rendered. It was some picture like the following, from the same system/simulator: http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/tree/images/e-s-military.jpghttp://i28.tinypic.com/2r5asus.jpg
I never knew what simulator that was from, or what the title of the book was. I've tried looking on the internet for pictures of old 80s flight simulators, but could never find it, but now I think I have!.
The graphics of this flight simulator kinda looks like a high-end, high-spec version of Namco's 'Polygonizer'/System 21 or SEGA's MODEL 1 flat-shaded polygon-pushing arcade boards-The CT5 military flight simulator obviously has much higher resolution, has much greater polygon performance, than the Namco System 21 & SEGA Model 1 boards. The CT5 also has anti-aliasing, and gouraud shading which Sega's & Namco's early polygon arcade boards lacked. Obviously however, the CT5 simulator does not have the texture-mapping that Namco's System 22 and SEGA's Model 2 boards had. Texture-mapping wasn't around until the mid-to-late 1980s, in high-end simulators & workstations.
Us gamers would always look to the arcades, wishing that home console games could match the incredible graphics of advanced arcade technology. Well, in that same sense, arcade game developers "looked up" to advanced military simulation technology, wishing that arcade games could have the same sort of graphics as high-end simulation and workstation technology! :D
Real-time computer graphics was pretty much invented in the 1960s for the Apollo Lunar Docking Simulator, by General Electric Aerospace, who would later go on to help SEGA develop the Model 1 board of 1992.
Evans & Sutherland advanced the field of real-time CG graphics in the 1970s with gouraud shading, and other advances, for flat-shaded polygons, mostly for the military and airline industry.
Then General Electric Aerospace (later Martin Marietta) further advanced the field by inventing texture-mapping in the 1980s, for military flight & tank simulators.
It was these companies, General Electric Aerospace/Martin Marietta and Evans & Sutheland that provided SEGA and NAMCO with the means for 3D polygon + texture-mapping graphics technologies in the early-mid 1990s with the System 22 and MODEL 2 arcade boards, sometime after Sega & Namco started with flat-shaded polygon graphics with the System 21 and Model 1 boards.
Things follow a general progression from larger/more expensive, to smaller/less expensive. From Military & industry, to Arcade, to home use.
flat-shaded graphics for NASA, military, commercial/industry: 1960s & 1970s.
texture mapped graphics for military & industry: 1980s
flat shaded polygon graphics for arcade games: late 80s, early 90s
texture mapped graphics for arcade games: early-mid 1990s
flat-shaded polygon graphics for consumer console games: early-mid 1990s
texture mapped graphics for console games: mid 1990s
edit: found another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W-qb_jHRhA with more demos of its graphics capability, and interestingly, an important piece of information, the year this simulator was around, *1981* that's 10-11 years before the comparatively low-end Sega/GE Aerospace Model 1 arcade board was introduced, and similarly, roughly a decade before the final revisions of Namco's System 21 board was around.
Evans & Sutherland was ahead of almost everyone, including Silicon Graphics, during the 1980s. If you saw high-end SGI workstations of the 80s in action, they would be at a lower level than E&S simulators. Only one company in the world could match the graphics prowess of E&S, and that was General Electric Aerospace, that was bought out by Martin Marietta in 1993, and merged with Lockheed in 1995 to form Lockheed-Martin, and they setup a company called Real3D in 1995. Two great rivals in computer graphics, Evans & Sutherland and GE Aerospace/Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin/Real3D, from the late 1960s, through the 1970s and 1980s, into the 1990s. Each of these two great rivals in computer graphics would help two competing arcade giants in the 90s: Namco and SEGA, with their arcade hardware powering many of the games we loved then, and now.
I hope this post is of some interest, to some of you.