[hnlmorg]

> Exactly my point. Your metric (for judging graphics capabilities) in this case was strictly preference (bias) about a set of games with a specific visual aesthetic from 1991/92 ("It wasn’t until the era of ray casting 2.5D 1st person shooter that PCs started looking better than their counterparts").

That’s the literal opposite of my point. I don’t think you’re actually reading my comments properly. Or if you are, you’re just reading the words and assuming I’m wrong so not really listening to the points im making.

> Yes, until, by my estimation, 1987/88 (at a time a lot of dedicated PC-gaming magazines got off the ground as well). Strictly on technological grounds, i. e. on many technological but also economical metrics, as contextualized by real-world use cases across whole industries and economies in many nations.

That’s not an unreasonable estimation. The date isn’t going to be exact and I’d probably nudge it a little later, but I don’t think you’re being unfair with that figure either.

> My experience is, as I've internalized a long time ago, certainly limited. But then again, so is yours. :p

I see you’ve forgotten the part where I mentioned how I ran a side gig as tech support ;)

[spankibalt]

> That’s the literal opposite of my point.

In your proposition, a whole eco system's ("PCs") graphics started only to "look better" than their counterparts, based on your examples anyway, from 1991/92 onwards. Appeals to specific aesthetics, etc. (e. g. only 2D- or only 3D-capabilities) can quickly lead to fallacies of composition. As they so often do in arguments between mostly opinionated men about their favorite toys. :D

> I see you’ve forgotten the part where I mentioned how I ran a side gig as tech support ;)

No, I haven't. Thank you for your service! O7

[hnlmorg]

You’re replying to peoples comments but you’re not even trying to understand what people have said in those comments.

Take below for example. You keep claiming that I had a preference for 3D games but I made no such statement. And in fact repeatedly try to steer the conversation back to the 80s and before 3D games were the norm on any platform.

What you’re missing is we are talking about hardware technology and you are talking about preference of games. You’re the one who’s arguing about preferences. Not us.

> In your proposition, a whole eco system's ("PCs") graphics started only to "look better" than their counterparts, based on your examples anyway, from 1991/92 onwards. Appeals to specific aesthetics, etc. (e. g. only 2D- or only 3D-capabilities) can quickly lead to fallacies of composition. As they so often do in arguments between mostly opinionated men about their favorite toys. :D

I’m usually the first to invoke the “preference isn’t the same as fact” argument, but in this instance we have impartial proof that PCs lagged behind just by virtue of the technology available at comparable price points.

When PCs were stuck with CGA, not support for scrolling, etc, they were unambiguously worse than games consoles of that era. While Atari ST and Amiga were producing graphics that exceeded what the Master System and NES could do.

The whole reason Commander Keen existed was because Carmak (I forget how his name is spelt) found a hack to produce Super Mario quality graphics on commodity IBM-compatible hardware. Something previously considered impossible to do.

The point I’m making about 2.5D games isn’t pretence either. It’s showing where PCs grew beyond the capabilities of their contemporaries. You couldn’t do ray tracing on 16 bit consoles. Frankly, it even performed like shit on most 32bit consoles too. Yet it worked really well on PCs.

What you’re talking about is games that you liked to play. What I’m talking about is the actual technical capabilities of the hardware.

And the fact that literally every single person you’ve chatted to about this has disagreed with your analysis and echoed my statements must surely demonstrate that you’re attempting to rewrite history around your own preferences for PCs.

It’s fine to like prefer PCs. Nobody would criticise you for having that preference. The comments being made here wasn’t that you can’t have a good time with PCs. It was that the technology behind the PCs was shit compared to the other 80s alternatives. And that’s something that you can easily, and everyone already has, clearly demonstrated in our posts.

I think the real crux of the problem here is that you’re too young and/or grew up in the wrong part of Europe to have really seen the difference and instead of listening to others, you’re still firmly clinging onto the belief that your opinions are infallible. Unfortunately, in this specific instance, the body of evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against you.

[spankibalt]

Added comment, as I've missed this before:

> You keep claiming that I had a preference for 3D games but I made no such statement.

How absurd, I made no such claim. I simply referred to something you brought up: the visual aesthetics of 2.5D raytraced games from ca. '91/'92, which was your yardstick to judge the (graphics) capabilities of competing eco systems, i. e. to determine when PC games began to "look better than their counterparts" from the homecomputer world. Which, to me, is just a generalization; a fallacy.

You either didn't read my posts properly, or are deliberately putting words in my mouth. So unless you offer up some serious numbers, detailed use cases, cultural insights, war stories, et cetera... this conversation has run its course for me. For the record, the rest of my reply is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44273046].

[spankibalt]

From below...

> I’m usually the first to invoke the “preference isn’t the same as fact” argument, but in this instance we have impartial proof that PCs lagged behind just by virtue of the technology available at comparable price points.

The "bang for the buck"-deal relevant home computers had going for 'em was something I already acknowledged... more than once... a while ago.

> When PCs were stuck with CGA, not support for scrolling, etc, they were unambiguously worse than games consoles of that era. While Atari ST and Amiga were producing graphics that exceeded what the Master System and NES could do.

Once again, the Amiga 500 home computer came to the market only in 1987, a machine already outperformed by top-of-the-line PCs from the same year, strictly in technological terms of course. For an economical comparison one would need specific use cases and numbers, i. e. prices, accessability, and so on. The rest falls into the area of coders and users adapting to these very platforms and eco systems, and their associated culture and politics, et cetera.

> The whole reason Commander Keen existed was because [...] Something previously considered impossible to do.

Yeah, negotiating, and overcoming, specific limitations every platform had in one form or another. Also already addressed when I replied to the other chap trying to make a huge deal out of PC memory segmentation...

> What you’re talking about is games that you liked to play. What I’m talking about is the actual technical capabilities of the hardware.

Yeah, when I mention the superior technical capabilities of PCs from, say, '87/'88 onwards several times (VGA, MT-32, expandability, etc.), it's "just games I like to play"; when you talk about some 2.5D titles just "looking better than some nebulous counterparts" it's of course hardware capability. :D

As I've said, somebody needs to write a piece of satire. A sort of two-hander the likes of The Sunset Limited or My Dinner with Andre. Just for us nerdlingers.

> And the fact that literally every single person you’ve chatted to [...].

For every Atari etc. fan with an application edge-case or preference (e. g. Signum!), I can easily forward one myself.

> I think the real crux of the problem here is that you’re too young and/or grew up in the wrong part of Europe to have really seen the difference and instead of listening to others, you’re still firmly clinging onto the belief that your opinions are infallible.

As mentioned several times already as well, I saw the sign, bro, I have seen the difference. I got hands-on experience with C64s, C128s and PCs (including XT- and AT-class machines) from '89 onwards, the Atari ST from '90 onwards, and the Amiga eco-system by only reading all the relevant glossies, including back-issues, in a very dedicated fashion from '90/'91 onwards. In the latter case, hands-on experience came only much later (mostly in the form of A600s and A1200s, the faves of the retro/vintage gaming circuit), from 2007 onwards.

And that's just computers. Consoles are another matter.