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Reading 06: But Can it Run Crysis?

The transition from 2D graphics to 3D graphics was rough, ugly, and drawn out. Early 3D games that were praised for their cutting edge visuals seem painfully ugly by today's standards. The amount of polygons required to draw a realistic looking image was a daunting task for early consoles and it wasn't until the early 2000s with the PS2 and XBOX that 3D visuals would look like anything more than a mess of pointy blocks. 

Original Tomb Raider was something else
Today's modern graphics are the result of years of cutthroat competition between ATI (later AMD) and Nvidia. If it wasn't for the technological arms race these companies underwent, we wouldn't have computer graphics as we know them. That's not to say that just gaming that has benefitted from the explosion in power of graphics processors. With CUDA and other similar technologies the GPU is poised for rapid growth in areas it wasn't originally intended for. One of the more obvious places to look is mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. As a result of their popularity, GPU prices have soared lately, to the point that Nvidia has made changes to its EULA to prevent consumer cards from being used in server farms and begun asking OEMs to help prevent bulk orders of consumer cards. With each new architecture and subsequent die shrink, the graphical capabilities of these processors will continue to grow.

These days it's not uncommon to see people hold on to the same GPU for several years. In the past, it was much more common (and cheaper) to upgrade your graphics card in order to play certain games. It may seem bizarre these days, but in the past it wasn't uncommon to have to purchase a new card in order to gain access to a newer version of DirectX required by a game. The rapid pace of development for game engines meant that meeting the minimum spec often required an upgrade.

For a lot of people, the first big title that required a significant upgrade was Crysis. I didn't actually play Crysis until 2 years ago. Needless to say by that time by PC was safely able to run Crysis. It's a game that definitely feels like it was made more as a playable tech demo than anything else, similar to its younger cousin Far Cry. The game's story is quite frankly a mess. With North Koreans invading an island full of dormant aliens and also super soldiers with nano suits and lots of nukes. Basically the game is a playable action movie. What makes the game significant is the engine that Crytek used to develop the title: CryEngine. CryEngine was known for its excellent lighting and ability to scale on high end PCs. But really what it was known for was its ability to fry PC graphics card at the time of its release. Being able to run Crysis was a status symbol to brag about. It also became a pretty big meme.

This game came out 11 years ago
Crysis is often called out for how well it looked at maximum settings, but 2007 was an incredible year for video games in general. Not counting Crysis, games that came out that year included Assassin's Creed, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Super Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and The Witcher. All of these games pushed the envelope for what a video game could look like and how it could play. Some of my favorite game franchises ever got their start during 2007.

Here's a couple more highlights:






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