Dan’s underground tunnel was reported to have made it all the way to directly underneath Austin the last time we heard. When we went over to it to check for potential emergence holes, it became clear that he either made a wrong turn or had some unfinished business to attend to first, as his tunnel continued under Texas towards the city of Las Vegas. Seems as though he’ll potentially work his way back down the tunnel he dug after he’s finished at the roulette table.
My favourite part of this is it suggests Dan has made it as far as Austin, but instead of just getting out of the tunnel and getting a lift to Gav's house he's hellbent on still tunnelling 😂😂
FDA needs to regulate a warning label across all things screens. 🤓📖↙️ Entertainment is so present & powerful like a drug that comforts our oxygen deprived brains… Label should say: This drug isn’t for those who are easily hypnotized (fancy word for manipulated).
Fun thing is that this isn't really computing anything, there are no "where to move next" instructions being sent, its all analog. just a cleverly modulated signal strength controlling the magnets inside, which determines where the electrons end up. It's amazing how ingeniously these things had to be made before we could just code a microcontroller to do it for us.
@@jasonblalock4429 I don't think it would look any different, actually. Each number is just a metal cutout that glows when it is active. There might be some flickering to see, but that would be it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
5:25 is one of the funniest moments I've seen on UA-cam just because of all the other arcade cabinets being normal and then Tempest just doing it's own thing
Really cool. I was always so impressed by how futuristic the HUDs in 80s fighter jets are. This really shows how much they could do with relatively weak computers back then.
@@creativenamegoeshere2562 No, not as well. I've looked at code for over 40 years. The education level of coders is much lower today, on average, than it was 30-50 years ago.
I love how the younger viewers are impressed that this was done with "ancient", 40 year old technology, but don't realize that people were drawing shapes, text, and images on oscilloscopes (a vector graphic CRT) a century ago - right around the turn of the 1900s. To the younger generation's credit, though, it has been game graphics that has driven the advancement of monitor and display technology.
Well said. The funny part is, we still have analog transceivers in use today for the digital age. A friend of mine works for a local news company and he was surprised to see how analog 100,000+ watt transmitters can still be, despite the digital broadcast.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show) I take out a projector on Halloween each year. I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time. .. I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
@@hansiraber Off hand, I suggest you look up the artistic works of Mary Ellen Bute Nemeth who began incorporating oscilloscope *Lissajous pattern* imagery into film animations in the 1930s and 40s. These are cyclic patterns very similar to what you get from an old Spirograph. CRT Oscilloscopes have been around since the very late 1800s and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you apply control voltages to both electron beam deflector axis you can draw what ever cyclic signal your electronics can create.
@@3DPDK nemeth started working with lissajous patterns in the 50s, as far as i can tell. was, or wasn't there anything going on "right around the turn of the 1900"? because i have zero knowledge of this.
The math for vector graphics is actually a lot easier than raster, because you can draw elements to the screen as you finish calculating them instead of in strict top to bottom order.
"I'm feeling like Techmoan, but without the Mancunian charm". It's nice to see how Gav kind of looks up to Mat as a YT celebrity, even if this channel has 12 times as many subscribers.
TBH, every time I see Gav in a Labcoat I really want to read new episodes of my favourite webcomic, Schlock Mercenary. Unfortunately it's author went into a hiatus.
@@DinnerForkTongue You are not familiar with the Techmoan channel maybe? Well, I take it for granted as a well known one, so it sounds a bit strange to me, but if you take a look you won't regret -hopefully-.
Went to an arcade and played asteroids and was amazed at how crisp and nice looking the display looked, it's cool finding out how it works and why its so distinctly different than other types of displays. Great video as always!
Yeah, I had head the phrase "vector graphics" many times over the years, and understood what a vector was, but never really thought that the lines would actually be made in a very different way than a standard display. I guess I just figured that there was vector math in the way things were calculated.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the era when vector games were new. There was something quite magical about them. The Star Wars game in particular used to draw a crowd whenever someone put 10p in the machine. We were unsophisticated kids that were easily fooled by illusions. Some coloured lines flashing on a screen made us feel like we were actually flying down the trench on the Death Star. I think the vector games have remained "magical" unlike some of the raster/sprite games of the same period. As the displays were often only 256 pixels wide, blocky/pixelated games of the era look unclear and jerky to modern eyes, but the vectors still seem sharp and fast. There are some good emulations via MAME etc that reproduce the flickering and glowing of the lines quite accurately, but a real vector arcade machine is something special.
I worked in the field of protein crystallography in 1980's and beyond and wrote software that had to draw complex views of data. The 1980's used the Evans and Sutherland computers which were vector graphics engines, and you could only draw a number of lines before you brain could see the flicker of the image. The computer code draw lines, and these were drawn exactly in order in the computer code, and you had to limit the number you drew. All code was "wire-frame", just like this. We also worked on the earliest version of stereo in the 1990's where the monitor was over clocked to double its refresh rate (and not interlaced), then you drew the left/right scene in the bottom and top of the view - which would then wrap round when you over-ran the monitor to 100Hz. (Europe), to create the stereo. We drew 2 dots on the screen which used 2 sensors to hand made LCD glasses that would alternate flash, so the eyes would see the alternate scenes. SGI computers replaced these vector machines with the first "high-performance" raster graphics in the 1990 - and these cost from 100,000 to some 500,000 $/£ each and some the size of a small desk with an 18 inch cooling fan.
It was such a cool feeling going to these arcades in the 80 with all the sounds and being so dark so you could see the screens plus all the people. Too bad most people will never know it. Good video.
Great u start with Tempest! I’m 62 now n in 81 was finishing my undergrad in psychology. One of my last courses was the psychologiy of perception. I liked Missle Command n then when it came out, Tempest. I used to half-kid my friends that most likely the designers were hip enough to structure the flicker rate to such a degree to stimulate our eyes’ Rods n Cones enough to ensure we would become “addicted” to play again. 😄 it was a great era
Yeah, when I was a kid, vector games were my favorites. Even if much newer/prettier games were around, I'd still be playing Asteroids or Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show) I take out a projector on Halloween each year. I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time. .. I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
Finally a good explanation how Vector graphics works. You can talk all about it, but this just SHOWS what happens! So this is of great educational/explanatory value. Thanks Gav!
After seeing your previous videos on various screens, this completely blew my mind. It's so different! I opened this video thinking "well how different can it possibly be", and you sure showed me. Thank you for continuing to point Phantoms at everyday items, the results are so fascinating. PS: Nice to see a few seconds of Dan in the sponsorship 😂
I had always wondered why screens flashed when they were recorded, and Gavin answered that. Ever since it just gets more and more interesting with all the different ways technology brings visuals to our eyes.
I was a CRT tester a few years ago and it's really cool to see these in slow mo. The science that goes into producing these even today is impressive and pretty labor intensive depending the kind of tube it is. Size, how many guns are in it, type of coatings, how the coatings are applied, the housing (shield), how the wiring is setup. Can get complicated quick.
Oscillofun is this brought to life with current technology. Also you can get the slow motion display simply by varying the readout rate for your raster display, obviating the need for the slow motion camera, plus the modern versions can sort of do flood filling, by drawing multiple lines in an area, to fill it in, and letting the eye integrate the lines into a solid block.
I love that out with all the advancements in display technology since the CRT TV, it's still basically the same thing. The images have gotten sharper, the animations have gotten smoother, but it's still a line tracing down the screen too fast for the eye to follow.
Same method of scanning lasers for shows, that’s also not a new technology. The laser can be three (or more) colors to converge for all the colors, can be turned off instantly, and make plotted lines for various designs or shapes, and the less saturated a design is for plot points, the smoother and quicker the scans. (FPS) The difference is now, the electronics and micro controllers needed to do the trick have become more powerful and much easier to wield, and the lasers have become insanely fast at high-resolution scans. One fun trick is to have a color show laser machine make a raster scan type image on a wall like a tv screen without the tv.
Growing up, I was always fascinated with vector-based graphics and absolutely loved games like Battle Zone, Star Wars, and Tempest, precisely because they were so different than the other sprite-based games of the day. Awesome presentation of the tech!
I'm glad you're going down the rabbithole of "things right in front of us;" it's so fascinating to see everything we see on a daily basis be shown as what it truly is.
4:33 - My mind is absolutely blown away. I can't believe this is a way that developers used to use this as a way of displaying information on a screen! SUPER COOL. Thank you for this, Gav! 😁
Niiiice. I wasn't around at the time but I've been a fan of Vector games for a while. My personal favorite is Lunar Lander because I'm a huge space nerd lol.
I had no idea at the time that so many games we were playing were vector graphics, thanks for the enlightenment...I find this form of 'screen drawing' rather aesthetically pleasing. Incidentally, this form of graphics remind me of oscilloscope music...!
This was really cool. Especially since Tempest, Battle Zone, and Star Wars were 3 of my favorite arcade games in the early 80s. I really dug the vector graphics.
This has probably been said before, but the vector image looks so sharp regardless of the scale the image is at because vectors aren't images in the traditional sence. It's basically just a math equation of coordinates that the computer interprets and translates visually to a user. This is in contrast to something like a jpeg, which is in essence, one long array of numbers for RGB that the computer assembles into an image
Just wanna say how incredible Gav is for keeping this channel going so strongly! We all miss Dan a tonne and I can't wait for him to be back, but Gav, you're amazing!
I don't know the chances of it happening, but if you've ever heard of the channel Retro Game Mechanics Explained, he's done a deep dive into the programming and mechanics behind Atari's Quadrascan vector based arcade games about 10 months ago, and it's very interesting, it would be so cool to see a collaboration between you two on it, or related topics. When you are able to go so deep in understanding what each line of programming does, and then immediately go see it in action in slow motion, that is the coolest thing in my opinion. Here's the video he made on Atari Quadrascan: ua-cam.com/video/smStEPSRKBs/v-deo.html and here's a link to his channel if you want to check it out, he does a lot more really cool topics, even going so far as to manually decompress a Pokemon sprite by hand during a livestream for charity: ua-cam.com/users/RetroGameMechanicsExplained
I always loved vector screens. It just has these incredible contrast and the lines were as bright as a laser. Which after seeing how it works, its essentially the same theory for creating an image with a laser
What amazes me more is the speed at which the CRT can actually draw and direct the beam. How on earth does it do that so fast and so accurately.. . especially as its such old tech now?!
Thats what I struggle understanding... newer tvs are just as crazy with millions of little flaps opening and closing to direct the color of light.... so insane it does not seem possible
Back in the early 80's I had a full size Tempest game complete with coin chutes. I had a side job repairing these machines and always favored X-Y displays over raster scan. Another good one is Major Havoc.
As the proud owner of a full Tempest upright since 1991, all I can say is: Very neat! And also, turn the brightness down a bit else you'll damage that 40 year old monitor! :)
To elaborate on how your brain perceives a cathode ray tube television, it's a lot like closing your eyes in a dark room for a while then opening them and flipping the light on and then off again as fast as you can one time. The light temporarily burns an image into your brain's neurons because your neurons are very slow to get rid of the byproducts(?) of that stimulation. I don't exactly know what it is inside the nerve cells themselves that lingers for a split second after the light flashes in the dark room but it's the reason why you perceive the tv to be displaying a whole picture all the time while it's on. Also you know you did it right in the dark room if after the light goes off you see like a really dark purple hue for about a quarter to half a second
There’s another downside in that the more stuff you had on the screen, the longer it took to draw a frame. Eventually, it gets to the point that there isn’t time to draw everything.
I still don't understand how Atari was able to pull off their Star Wars / ESB flight sims. It's crazy how much they had going on, yet maintained a smooth - and quite high for the time - framerate.
And then there is the problem with elements that are obscured by other elements. What is trivial on a raster screen (first paint the background, then paint the foreground over it) becomes complicated and very time-consuming in vector space---you basically have to do the same calculations as a ray-tracing machine needs to do. (For every line you want to draw, you need to split it at all points where a ray from your eye intersects both the line and the border of any closed shape that is closer to the eye than the line.) This gets incredibly slow very fast, so rendering into a frame buffer instead directly onto the screen makes perfect sense. Especially once the frame buffer resolution matches the screen.
For a time, the vector games were the "fastest" games, because they were so stripped down (and designed and coded so brilliantly, using a "less is more" philosophy), but the consumer wanted more realistic graphics. When faster CPUs and graphics chips were invented, and pixel resolutions could go up, larger bitmap sprites took over the arcades. The vector games have retained a certain magic though.
Another key point about vector displays is they can change the brightness by changing how slowly they draw a line or stay on a dot. The bullets in Asteroids are brighter than anything on a raster display because it keeps the beam on one spot for longer.
Totally fun to watch the order they drew it in. I wonder how many people watching this are old enough to have grown up playing these games. I played so much battle zone and tempest.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show) I take out a projector on Halloween each year. I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time. .. I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
I worked on the head-up display for the Harrier aircraft. It was a vector display projected onto a transparent mirror. The CRT had a 1" diameter screen with a spot size of .001" and was incredibly bright. It had to be visible when flying (almost) into the sun.
For the Siggraph 2007 Electronic Theater we had computer graphics pioneers play tempest, and other games on a 60ft screen with 9W lasers, exploiting the vector graphics
One thing I've always liked about slowmo, is the idea that these things have been figured out at some point, yet it's taken until we had high frame capture rates to see how it works.
You'll have to look for the video where a guy who does tech was testing a laser projector on various vector games. It didn't get all the shapes exact because the speed of the beam was too slow to be accurate, but it's got me wondering if there could be a way to turn a vector crt into a similar setup? You'll have to rip all the guts out, but I think there's a workable concept.
Fascinating. I never knew there were vector displays, assuming all screens refreshed line by line. Thank you for this! Also, the story of Dan the Subocean Traveller is hilarious, as always.
Actually the vector displays predates matrix displays. After all they are just glorified cathode tubes like those that used to be found in oscilloscopes. Matrix graphics was much harder to create using early computers. On early computer terminals the displays were character mapped. That is there were no bitmap for the display and the information needed to draw the characters were created by a character generator. Any time you wanted more flexible graphics vector displays were used. I remember that they had a terminal capable of displaying vector graphics at the university a friend and I used to go to to use their computer. We were still in middle school so perhaps 12 years old or so, and the only way we were able to get some computer time was by applying for an account at a university and use their mainframe. The graphics terminal was freaking impressive tech for the time. I remember that the colors were not aligned in a single plane which made it possible to create some weird but interesting parallax effects. Yea, we weren't doing a lot of serious programming, but it taught me a lot. My friend spent a lot more time there than I did though.
@@blahorgaslisk7763 I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show) I take out a projector on Halloween each year. I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time. .. I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
@@Observ45er Awesome! Perhaps it's time to see if you can cobble together some simple game now. Should go over well with the grandparents following their grandkids around...
As someone who can't safely handle a flashing screen, I really appreciate that you lead with that when appropriate. So many channels don't give the warning until several minutes in after I've invested time I'll never get back, or worse, not at all.
Tempest… now I feel old. I actually remember when that game was still in arcades. Besides Asteroids, another well known vector graphics game from that era was Omega Race. And let us not forget the Vectrex game console.
You can see exactly the same effect by actually drawing the images on the CRT but slower - osci-render which is a project I've been working on lets you render vector graphics on a CRT oscilloscope, just like this, and it has a frequency control which lets you reduce the frequency well below 1Hz, creating the same frame-tracing effect you see in slow motion :)
Hi Gav, fantastic video as always. Love to see how our eyes are fooled by display technology. Would you ever consider pointing the Phantom at a DLP projector? It would be incredible to see the DMD device and colour wheel working together. With new faux 4K system, the DMD is flashed multiple times tin increase the perceived resolution.
Tektronix made computer terminals that worked this way - but you didn't need special viewing techniques to see how they worked: (a) they weren't particularly fast when drawing (b) they had an electrical bias field that kept the phosphor charged, it wasn't until you were done with the page and wanted to clear it that you did a "wipe" pass.
Current modern displays can't even come close to replicating the stunning, almost literally radioactive luminescence these old machines have even today. Not even a 4K HDR screen.
Purely in terms of visuals, those CRTs are as good as it gets, they haven't been bettered. They were bulky, power hungry, deadly if opened, dangerous if damaged, and could cause eye-strain, which is why LCD panels have replaced them, but the response time, colour reproduction and ability to scale to any resolution without blurring at all is unmatched.
@@Wabajak13 They exist, and have done for decades - they use lasers, no need for phoshpor coatings. Fast moving lazers trace a pattern, and it looks to the observer like a solid line.
@@damienallbran I still remember when these two dudes were in dans backyard, hard to see that they weren’t really living together, never really thought about it. I mean they did just say Dan’s house so it make sense
The biggest plus side was probably the reduced memory footprint. Storing a few points which tell how to draw game elements is several bytes. You may even be able to generate the points dynamically at runtime. On the flip side, storing images and palettes is many kilobytes of data. You have to start reusing assets quickly and the game can only have so much content.
This Display technology reminds me of show-lasers used for lasershows. They can also only display lines. But instead of an electron beam, they unse a combined rgb laserbeam and e very high speed mirror system.
Which is literally the same idea, except the elctron beam is guided by magnetic fields and makes the phosphorous on the screen light up, while the laser is bright enough to leave a trace on your retina even when reflected from a wall. I wonder if anyone actually programmed a lasershow display to play the old vector games. That would be totally rad.
@@EyMannMachHin Yes Laseroids (asteroids via laser) is built into one of the leading control software/hardware providors. It's fun playing it on a 100x100m projection on almost any surface you can point a 30+W laser at.. in the right conditions you could do 300x300 lol.
Tempest was my absolute favorite game back in the 80s. My sister and I would waste many quarters at our local arcade playing this. So nice to see it, especially in slow mo! Thanks for the memories .
Saw an "unfortunate" comment so I just gotta say, even without Dan these videos are still great! You do an awesome job despite the lack of Dan. I think we all miss him in these videos but, until you two can properly meet up we'll all still enjoy the slow mo guy/s :)
What happens when people live off fear and the media and government sells it. We aren't ever getting back to normal, all over a disease with a death rate similar to common cold.
Fun fact for those that wish to understand video editing- That part where he showed all the brightest pixels line by line?, it was done one singular frame at a time, meaning he cut a picture and layered it for every single led. Now- UNDERSTAND WHY EDITORS ARE UNDERATED?
Thanks, loved seeing this in slo Mo. I grew up pumping coins into Battle Zone and Star Wars. I played Star Wars again a few years back and I was amazed how much muscle memory came back.
I've been into retro arcade games for a long time and was always intrigued by the ingenuity of the developers of Tempest. It is so nice to actually see footage of what I only imagined for such a long time. On another note I would again suggest to take a look into FPV drones. The rotation of the props when they do sharp flips and rolls will probably make for an interesting video, crashes even more so.
It's not just similar, it's the exact same tech. Vector monitors. They're really weird, but also completely unnecessary today because of how high raster resolutions have gotten. People will look back on vector displays decades from now and think "how the heck did they do that back then?"
@@Rhythmattica Oh yeah that's true, a lot of oscilloscopes even today use these types of displays. So I guess they aren't entirely in the dustbin of history.
For that matter, arguably the first video game ever made was a ping-pong game hacked onto an oscilloscope, so you could say that vector graphics were the FIRST video game graphics.
If anyone is curious about how this works from a technical level, Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a video on the Atari Quadrascan and it's really interesting to see how it works and how different is from traditional rasterized game rendering.
I miss you and Dan! Can't wait for another UA-cam sponsored run. I know UA-cam Red is dead, but we need an 8 episode seasons/series(8 weeks), every 6 months. Ill pay the channel $20 a year for that! SOOOOO WORTH IT!
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far down before a comment mentioned Gavin’s neck hair! I really didn’t want to be “that guy” and comment on his appearance of all things when the video’s content was so interesting and informative, but my GOD were my eyes immediately drawn to it when the SimpliSafe ad started around 6:30! I couldn’t look away 😆 The weirdest part is that the rest of his beard seems at least somewhat manicured! I wonder if he was growing it out on purpose or somehow forgot about his neck while shaving? Or maybe his electric razor died halfway through? It’s so stupid and unimportant and inconsequential, and yet here I am typing an entire comment about it because I need to know why it is the way it is now 🤦🏻♂️
I love vector based graphics, my logo is a svg. Infinitely scalable 😁 When will you compare all the other types of screens? This was definitely cool to watch!
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show) I take out a projector on Halloween each year. I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time. .. I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
Dan’s underground tunnel was reported to have made it all the way to directly underneath Austin the last time we heard. When we went over to it to check for potential emergence holes, it became clear that he either made a wrong turn or had some unfinished business to attend to first, as his tunnel continued under Texas towards the city of Las Vegas. Seems as though he’ll potentially work his way back down the tunnel he dug after he’s finished at the roulette table.
Another $200 on black?
what a coincidence I was thinking about yesterday whats inside arcade and its like a old pc. lol
He should have made a left turn at Albuquerque!
Big money! Big money! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!
My favourite part of this is it suggests Dan has made it as far as Austin, but instead of just getting out of the tunnel and getting a lift to Gav's house he's hellbent on still tunnelling 😂😂
I so appreciate you replaying the first slow-mo but with the image being persistent. Immediately satisfied the thought as it arised.
Yes
upload plz :)
FDA needs to regulate a warning label across all things screens. 🤓📖↙️
Entertainment is so present & powerful like a drug that comforts our oxygen deprived brains…
Label should say:
This drug isn’t for those who are easily hypnotized (fancy word for manipulated).
🤣🤣still love their content tho.🤪
*arose
Persistence of vision is awesome
No
It is. That's what allows us to play these games.
Hi
you are awesome.
it's kind of the leading factor why LED lighting isn't horrendous to us in its current form
It's actually crazy to me that this kind of ultra fast technology existed 40 years ago
It also really goes to show that you don't need much to fool our eyes!
Right!! If you’re talking about CRT, that goes way back 80 years. Proof time travelers exist.
Well people landed on the moon 50 years ago so not that crazy 🦫
@@G.Freeman92 you are prob just a troll
Fun thing is that this isn't really computing anything, there are no "where to move next" instructions being sent, its all analog. just a cleverly modulated signal strength controlling the magnets inside, which determines where the electrons end up. It's amazing how ingeniously these things had to be made before we could just code a microcontroller to do it for us.
Good timing to mention Mat/Techmoan. His video today is a "scope clock" with vector graphics on an oscilloscope tube.
Haha what are the chances!
@@theslowmoguys A Techmoan/Slow Mo Guys colab would be great, that guy has a veritable treasure chest of cool vintage tech.
@@gris4985 What does a Nixie tube look like in slo-mo? I'd like to see that.
@@jasonblalock4429 i second this
@@jasonblalock4429
I don't think it would look any different, actually. Each number is just a metal cutout that glows when it is active. There might be some flickering to see, but that would be it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
5:25 is one of the funniest moments I've seen on UA-cam just because of all the other arcade cabinets being normal and then Tempest just doing it's own thing
Really cool. I was always so impressed by how futuristic the HUDs in 80s fighter jets are. This really shows how much they could do with relatively weak computers back then.
Well, back then, it was a LOT of efficiency with coding and the like. See: Tim Follin with his music on the NES and Retro Game Mechanics Explained
@@AxxLAfriku ?
back when people knew how to program well.
@@protonneutron9046 people still program well, just with different software and hardware.
@@creativenamegoeshere2562 No, not as well. I've looked at code for over 40 years. The education level of coders is much lower today, on average, than it was 30-50 years ago.
I love how the younger viewers are impressed that this was done with "ancient", 40 year old technology, but don't realize that people were drawing shapes, text, and images on oscilloscopes (a vector graphic CRT) a century ago - right around the turn of the 1900s. To the younger generation's credit, though, it has been game graphics that has driven the advancement of monitor and display technology.
Well said. The funny part is, we still have analog transceivers in use today for the digital age. A friend of mine works for a local news company and he was surprised to see how analog 100,000+ watt transmitters can still be, despite the digital broadcast.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show)
I take out a projector on Halloween each year.
I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time.
..
I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
do you have any reference for the claim that there were shapes, text and images on any oscilloscope at the turn of 1900.
@@hansiraber Off hand, I suggest you look up the artistic works of Mary Ellen Bute Nemeth who began incorporating oscilloscope *Lissajous pattern* imagery into film animations in the 1930s and 40s. These are cyclic patterns very similar to what you get from an old Spirograph. CRT Oscilloscopes have been around since the very late 1800s and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you apply control voltages to both electron beam deflector axis you can draw what ever cyclic signal your electronics can create.
@@3DPDK
nemeth started working with lissajous patterns in the 50s, as far as i can tell.
was, or wasn't there anything going on "right around the turn of the 1900"? because i have zero knowledge of this.
Just thinking about how programmer back then coded something like this with such a limited resources gave me a chill.
The math for vector graphics is actually a lot easier than raster, because you can draw elements to the screen as you finish calculating them instead of in strict top to bottom order.
How cool would it be to invent something like this 40 years ago and then just now be able to see it slowed down
Necessity is the mother of invention. Having too much resources can actually be crippling, ironically enough.
@@Wabajak13 you could of course tune the scan speed down in your engine :) but I get what you were going for
@@DeathBringer769 ea vs an indie dev
"I'm feeling like Techmoan, but without the Mancunian charm". It's nice to see how Gav kind of looks up to Mat as a YT celebrity, even if this channel has 12 times as many subscribers.
TBH, every time I see Gav in a Labcoat I really want to read new episodes of my favourite webcomic, Schlock Mercenary. Unfortunately it's author went into a hiatus.
What Mat are you referring to?
@@DinnerForkTongue You are not familiar with the Techmoan channel maybe? Well, I take it for granted as a well known one, so it sounds a bit strange to me, but if you take a look you won't regret -hopefully-.
@@BilisNegra
Highly appreciate the recommendation!
To me, the mentioning of Techmoan came out of total nowhere, is there any occasion where they crossed paths that you may know of?
Went to an arcade and played asteroids and was amazed at how crisp and nice looking the display looked, it's cool finding out how it works and why its so distinctly different than other types of displays. Great video as always!
Yeah, I had head the phrase "vector graphics" many times over the years, and understood what a vector was, but never really thought that the lines would actually be made in a very different way than a standard display. I guess I just figured that there was vector math in the way things were calculated.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the era when vector games were new. There was something quite magical about them. The Star Wars game in particular used to draw a crowd whenever someone put 10p in the machine. We were unsophisticated kids that were easily fooled by illusions. Some coloured lines flashing on a screen made us feel like we were actually flying down the trench on the Death Star.
I think the vector games have remained "magical" unlike some of the raster/sprite games of the same period. As the displays were often only 256 pixels wide, blocky/pixelated games of the era look unclear and jerky to modern eyes, but the vectors still seem sharp and fast. There are some good emulations via MAME etc that reproduce the flickering and glowing of the lines quite accurately, but a real vector arcade machine is something special.
I worked in the field of protein crystallography in 1980's and beyond and wrote software that had to draw complex views of data. The 1980's used the Evans and Sutherland computers which were vector graphics engines, and you could only draw a number of lines before you brain could see the flicker of the image. The computer code draw lines, and these were drawn exactly in order in the computer code, and you had to limit the number you drew. All code was "wire-frame", just like this.
We also worked on the earliest version of stereo in the 1990's where the monitor was over clocked to double its refresh rate (and not interlaced), then you drew the left/right scene in the bottom and top of the view - which would then wrap round when you over-ran the monitor to 100Hz. (Europe), to create the stereo. We drew 2 dots on the screen which used 2 sensors to hand made LCD glasses that would alternate flash, so the eyes would see the alternate scenes.
SGI computers replaced these vector machines with the first "high-performance" raster graphics in the 1990 - and these cost from 100,000 to some 500,000 $/£ each and some the size of a small desk with an 18 inch cooling fan.
It was such a cool feeling going to these arcades in the 80 with all the sounds and being so dark so you could see the screens plus all the people. Too bad most people will never know it. Good video.
Great u start with Tempest!
I’m 62 now n in 81 was finishing my undergrad in psychology. One of my last courses was the psychologiy of perception.
I liked Missle Command n then when it came out, Tempest.
I used to half-kid my friends that most likely the designers were hip enough to structure the flicker rate to such a degree to stimulate our eyes’ Rods n Cones enough to ensure we would become “addicted” to play again. 😄 it was a great era
I've always adored vector displays. Any time I'm at an arcade I'm drawn to any game using them with their intense contrast and vibrancy.
Yeah, when I was a kid, vector games were my favorites. Even if much newer/prettier games were around, I'd still be playing Asteroids or Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show)
I take out a projector on Halloween each year.
I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time.
..
I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
This filled in a void i had in my head for years as to how vector graphics worked
Finally a good explanation how Vector graphics works.
You can talk all about it, but this just SHOWS what happens! So this is of great educational/explanatory value.
Thanks Gav!
My mate dan doesn't find those flashing lights horrendous.
He loves em so much, he's doing a special weird dance on the floor.
After seeing your previous videos on various screens, this completely blew my mind. It's so different! I opened this video thinking "well how different can it possibly be", and you sure showed me. Thank you for continuing to point Phantoms at everyday items, the results are so fascinating.
PS: Nice to see a few seconds of Dan in the sponsorship 😂
YES!
never knew these type of games existed in 1981. I thought it would be really flat and dull looking stuff but this is gorgeous.
I had always wondered why screens flashed when they were recorded, and Gavin answered that. Ever since it just gets more and more interesting with all the different ways technology brings visuals to our eyes.
I was a CRT tester a few years ago and it's really cool to see these in slow mo. The science that goes into producing these even today is impressive and pretty labor intensive depending the kind of tube it is. Size, how many guns are in it, type of coatings, how the coatings are applied, the housing (shield), how the wiring is setup. Can get complicated quick.
I am amazed at the speed all of this happens. Unfathomable. Way more impressive to me than refreshing a "simple" grid of dots.
Oscillofun is this brought to life with current technology. Also you can get the slow motion display simply by varying the readout rate for your raster display, obviating the need for the slow motion camera, plus the modern versions can sort of do flood filling, by drawing multiple lines in an area, to fill it in, and letting the eye integrate the lines into a solid block.
I love that out with all the advancements in display technology since the CRT TV, it's still basically the same thing. The images have gotten sharper, the animations have gotten smoother, but it's still a line tracing down the screen too fast for the eye to follow.
Same method of scanning lasers for shows, that’s also not a new technology. The laser can be three (or more) colors to converge for all the colors, can be turned off instantly, and make plotted lines for various designs or shapes, and the less saturated a design is for plot points, the smoother and quicker the scans. (FPS)
The difference is now, the electronics and micro controllers needed to do the trick have become more powerful and much easier to wield, and the lasers have become insanely fast at high-resolution scans.
One fun trick is to have a color show laser machine make a raster scan type image on a wall like a tv screen without the tv.
My dad used to have the old cocktail table version of tempest. Loved playing it growing up, really cool to see a little bit more of how it worked.
Vectrex filled in the blocks of colour with transparent overlay sheets like an over-head projector.
Growing up, I was always fascinated with vector-based graphics and absolutely loved games like Battle Zone, Star Wars, and Tempest, precisely because they were so different than the other sprite-based games of the day.
Awesome presentation of the tech!
I'm glad you're going down the rabbithole of "things right in front of us;" it's so fascinating to see everything we see on a daily basis be shown as what it truly is.
4:33 - My mind is absolutely blown away. I can't believe this is a way that developers used to use this as a way of displaying information on a screen! SUPER COOL. Thank you for this, Gav! 😁
Tempest is my favorite childhood arcade game.. thank you
In the 80's "Tempest" was my best game. I held the whole "High Score" list on three different machines at one time, LOL.
Same!!!
Niiiice. I wasn't around at the time but I've been a fan of Vector games for a while. My personal favorite is Lunar Lander because I'm a huge space nerd lol.
I had no idea at the time that so many games we were playing were vector graphics, thanks for the enlightenment...I find this form of 'screen drawing' rather aesthetically pleasing.
Incidentally, this form of graphics remind me of oscilloscope music...!
This was really cool. Especially since Tempest, Battle Zone, and Star Wars were 3 of my favorite arcade games in the early 80s. I really dug the vector graphics.
Same. I was also terrible at Tempest. I dropped so many quarters on these.
@@shoesncheese I also dropped many quarters on Tempest, and became really good at it. I haven't seen it for decades, and it was great to see it again!
This has probably been said before, but the vector image looks so sharp regardless of the scale the image is at because vectors aren't images in the traditional sence. It's basically just a math equation of coordinates that the computer interprets and translates visually to a user. This is in contrast to something like a jpeg, which is in essence, one long array of numbers for RGB that the computer assembles into an image
I've never seen graphics like this before. That Star Wars game an Tempest look like a lot of fun
I remember seeing that Star Wars game in a cinema decades ago. It looked increadible, so much sharper than anything else.
Those games were fun to play back in the day.
Just wanna say how incredible Gav is for keeping this channel going so strongly! We all miss Dan a tonne and I can't wait for him to be back, but Gav, you're amazing!
I missed it - what happened to Dan?
I don't know the chances of it happening, but if you've ever heard of the channel Retro Game Mechanics Explained, he's done a deep dive into the programming and mechanics behind Atari's Quadrascan vector based arcade games about 10 months ago, and it's very interesting, it would be so cool to see a collaboration between you two on it, or related topics. When you are able to go so deep in understanding what each line of programming does, and then immediately go see it in action in slow motion, that is the coolest thing in my opinion. Here's the video he made on Atari Quadrascan: ua-cam.com/video/smStEPSRKBs/v-deo.html
and here's a link to his channel if you want to check it out, he does a lot more really cool topics, even going so far as to manually decompress a Pokemon sprite by hand during a livestream for charity: ua-cam.com/users/RetroGameMechanicsExplained
Great recommendation, thanks!
I always loved vector screens. It just has these incredible contrast and the lines were as bright as a laser. Which after seeing how it works, its essentially the same theory for creating an image with a laser
Nice to see Techmoan mentioned. 😁🤓
What amazes me more is the speed at which the CRT can actually draw and direct the beam.
How on earth does it do that so fast and so accurately.. . especially as its such old tech now?!
Thats what I struggle understanding... newer tvs are just as crazy with millions of little flaps opening and closing to direct the color of light.... so insane it does not seem possible
Back in the early 80's I had a full size Tempest game complete with coin chutes. I had a side job repairing these machines and always favored X-Y displays over raster scan. Another good one is Major Havoc.
As the proud owner of a full Tempest upright since 1991, all I can say is: Very neat! And also, turn the brightness down a bit else you'll damage that 40 year old monitor! :)
Well this shines a new light on arcade games!
@ТоммуFan 🅥 No.
To elaborate on how your brain perceives a cathode ray tube television, it's a lot like closing your eyes in a dark room for a while then opening them and flipping the light on and then off again as fast as you can one time. The light temporarily burns an image into your brain's neurons because your neurons are very slow to get rid of the byproducts(?) of that stimulation. I don't exactly know what it is inside the nerve cells themselves that lingers for a split second after the light flashes in the dark room but it's the reason why you perceive the tv to be displaying a whole picture all the time while it's on. Also you know you did it right in the dark room if after the light goes off you see like a really dark purple hue for about a quarter to half a second
Not brain but also the actual retina cells of the eyes produce afterglow.
There’s another downside in that the more stuff you had on the screen, the longer it took to draw a frame. Eventually, it gets to the point that there isn’t time to draw everything.
I still don't understand how Atari was able to pull off their Star Wars / ESB flight sims. It's crazy how much they had going on, yet maintained a smooth - and quite high for the time - framerate.
And then there is the problem with elements that are obscured by other elements. What is trivial on a raster screen (first paint the background, then paint the foreground over it) becomes complicated and very time-consuming in vector space---you basically have to do the same calculations as a ray-tracing machine needs to do. (For every line you want to draw, you need to split it at all points where a ray from your eye intersects both the line and the border of any closed shape that is closer to the eye than the line.) This gets incredibly slow very fast, so rendering into a frame buffer instead directly onto the screen makes perfect sense. Especially once the frame buffer resolution matches the screen.
For a time, the vector games were the "fastest" games, because they were so stripped down (and designed and coded so brilliantly, using a "less is more" philosophy), but the consumer wanted more realistic graphics. When faster CPUs and graphics chips were invented, and pixel resolutions could go up, larger bitmap sprites took over the arcades. The vector games have retained a certain magic though.
Another key point about vector displays is they can change the brightness by changing how slowly they draw a line or stay on a dot. The bullets in Asteroids are brighter than anything on a raster display because it keeps the beam on one spot for longer.
Nice Techmoan shoutout. Love that guy!
Totally fun to watch the order they drew it in. I wonder how many people watching this are old enough to have grown up playing these games. I played so much battle zone and tempest.
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show)
I take out a projector on Halloween each year.
I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time.
..
I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
I always knew there was something different about the display on these type of games. Thanks for the info Gav 👍👍
I worked on the head-up display for the Harrier aircraft. It was a vector display projected onto a transparent mirror. The CRT had a 1" diameter screen with a spot size of .001" and was incredibly bright. It had to be visible when flying (almost) into the sun.
Tempest is hypnotizing, even on a 50hz camera
For the Siggraph 2007 Electronic Theater we had computer graphics pioneers play tempest, and other games on a 60ft screen with 9W lasers, exploiting the vector graphics
This is somehow way more impressive to me than modern screens
One thing I've always liked about slowmo, is the idea that these things have been figured out at some point, yet it's taken until we had high frame capture rates to see how it works.
I've always loved vector graphics.
You'll have to look for the video where a guy who does tech was testing a laser projector on various vector games. It didn't get all the shapes exact because the speed of the beam was too slow to be accurate, but it's got me wondering if there could be a way to turn a vector crt into a similar setup?
You'll have to rip all the guts out, but I think there's a workable concept.
This is not only very cool to watch but very interesting to learn about. Gav's a great teacher lol
When I was a kid, I put many quarters into Tempest and Battle Zone. Good times....
“Hello I’m Gav.”
*…*
It just ain’t the same 😔
The slow mo guy
Games like Centuri’s Aztarac and Quantum by Atari used some absurdly fast vector monitors that could “fill-in” shapes for solid colors.
Fascinating. I never knew there were vector displays, assuming all screens refreshed line by line. Thank you for this!
Also, the story of Dan the Subocean Traveller is hilarious, as always.
Actually the vector displays predates matrix displays. After all they are just glorified cathode tubes like those that used to be found in oscilloscopes. Matrix graphics was much harder to create using early computers. On early computer terminals the displays were character mapped. That is there were no bitmap for the display and the information needed to draw the characters were created by a character generator. Any time you wanted more flexible graphics vector displays were used. I remember that they had a terminal capable of displaying vector graphics at the university a friend and I used to go to to use their computer. We were still in middle school so perhaps 12 years old or so, and the only way we were able to get some computer time was by applying for an account at a university and use their mainframe. The graphics terminal was freaking impressive tech for the time. I remember that the colors were not aligned in a single plane which made it possible to create some weird but interesting parallax effects. Yea, we weren't doing a lot of serious programming, but it taught me a lot. My friend spent a lot more time there than I did though.
@@blahorgaslisk7763 I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show)
I take out a projector on Halloween each year.
I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time.
..
I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
@@Observ45er Awesome! Perhaps it's time to see if you can cobble together some simple game now. Should go over well with the grandparents following their grandkids around...
As someone who can't safely handle a flashing screen, I really appreciate that you lead with that when appropriate. So many channels don't give the warning until several minutes in after I've invested time I'll never get back, or worse, not at all.
I'll keep using this joke
Somewhere: "And I'm Dan"
Dan: "NOT AGAIN"
Tempest… now I feel old. I actually remember when that game was still in arcades. Besides Asteroids, another well known vector graphics game from that era was Omega Race. And let us not forget the Vectrex game console.
You can see exactly the same effect by actually drawing the images on the CRT but slower - osci-render which is a project I've been working on lets you render vector graphics on a CRT oscilloscope, just like this, and it has a frequency control which lets you reduce the frequency well below 1Hz, creating the same frame-tracing effect you see in slow motion :)
So essentially, these things are oscilloscopes that play video games. Fascinating.
Hi Gav, fantastic video as always. Love to see how our eyes are fooled by display technology.
Would you ever consider pointing the Phantom at a DLP projector? It would be incredible to see the DMD device and colour wheel working together.
With new faux 4K system, the DMD is flashed multiple times tin increase the perceived resolution.
Tektronix made computer terminals that worked this way - but you didn't need special viewing techniques to see how they worked: (a) they weren't particularly fast when drawing (b) they had an electrical bias field that kept the phosphor charged, it wasn't until you were done with the page and wanted to clear it that you did a "wipe" pass.
And vector was 80's technology. Imagine what we could do now.
Current modern displays can't even come close to replicating the stunning, almost literally radioactive luminescence these old machines have even today. Not even a 4K HDR screen.
@@Retrotude absolutely, but imagine if someone used modern technology to build something new like vector from the ground up
Imagine a vector type projector. Except then I think you'd have to paint your walls in phosphor.
Purely in terms of visuals, those CRTs are as good as it gets, they haven't been bettered. They were bulky, power hungry, deadly if opened, dangerous if damaged, and could cause eye-strain, which is why LCD panels have replaced them, but the response time, colour reproduction and ability to scale to any resolution without blurring at all is unmatched.
@@Wabajak13 They exist, and have done for decades - they use lasers, no need for phoshpor coatings. Fast moving lazers trace a pattern, and it looks to the observer like a solid line.
Dan would love this
i know dan braught all the joy to this channel this other guy is only about facts not fun. .
I really miss Dan
What happened to him?
@Zeloric covid restrictionists make it impossible for them to see each other,.,
It’s as stupid as it sounds
@@damienallbran strange how they’ve not even done one though
@@damienallbran I still remember when these two dudes were in dans backyard, hard to see that they weren’t really living together, never really thought about it. I mean they did just say Dan’s house so it make sense
@@BheemNationalist abducted by aliens.
(Stuck in England because Covid)
This explains why those types of graphics displays were better at depth. Moving through a 3D space because of scalability.
Fascinating. Love this channel.
The biggest plus side was probably the reduced memory footprint. Storing a few points which tell how to draw game elements is several bytes. You may even be able to generate the points dynamically at runtime. On the flip side, storing images and palettes is many kilobytes of data. You have to start reusing assets quickly and the game can only have so much content.
3:48 This wound be a sick screen saver.
I loved Battle Zone and Star Wars when I was a kid at the arcade. Seeing them here brought back fun memories.
This Display technology reminds me of show-lasers used for lasershows.
They can also only display lines.
But instead of an electron beam, they unse a combined rgb laserbeam and e very high speed mirror system.
Which is literally the same idea, except the elctron beam is guided by magnetic fields and makes the phosphorous on the screen light up, while the laser is bright enough to leave a trace on your retina even when reflected from a wall. I wonder if anyone actually programmed a lasershow display to play the old vector games. That would be totally rad.
@@EyMannMachHin It happened in 2010 at Anthrocon: ua-cam.com/video/O81DbCaJRz0/v-deo.html
@@EyMannMachHin Yes Laseroids (asteroids via laser) is built into one of the leading control software/hardware providors. It's fun playing it on a 100x100m projection on almost any surface you can point a 30+W laser at.. in the right conditions you could do 300x300 lol.
Tempest was my absolute favorite game back in the 80s. My sister and I would waste many quarters at our local arcade playing this. So nice to see it, especially in slow mo! Thanks for the memories .
Saw an "unfortunate" comment so I just gotta say, even without Dan these videos are still great! You do an awesome job despite the lack of Dan. I think we all miss him in these videos but, until you two can properly meet up we'll all still enjoy the slow mo guy/s :)
What happens when people live off fear and the media and government sells it. We aren't ever getting back to normal, all over a disease with a death rate similar to common cold.
3:53 to think that our brain can process all that information and make it into a flawless image, fascinating
Fun fact for those that wish to understand video editing-
That part where he showed all the brightest pixels line by line?, it was done one singular frame at a time, meaning he cut a picture and layered it for every single led. Now-
UNDERSTAND WHY EDITORS ARE UNDERATED?
Thanks, loved seeing this in slo Mo. I grew up pumping coins into Battle Zone and Star Wars. I played Star Wars again a few years back and I was amazed how much muscle memory came back.
To be honest CRT displays amaze me more than any other technology we have today
This is INCREDIBLE I have been making oscilloscope art and it works the exact same way!
I haven’t watched you dudes in forever! I remember when you two dudes were just in ur backyard filming!
I've been into retro arcade games for a long time and was always intrigued by the ingenuity of the developers of Tempest. It is so nice to actually see footage of what I only imagined for such a long time. On another note I would again suggest to take a look into FPV drones. The rotation of the props when they do sharp flips and rolls will probably make for an interesting video, crashes even more so.
This makes me want to see a Vectrex working in slow mo (although it's probably very similar I suppose)
It's not just similar, it's the exact same tech. Vector monitors. They're really weird, but also completely unnecessary today because of how high raster resolutions have gotten. People will look back on vector displays decades from now and think "how the heck did they do that back then?"
Yes, and some of the homebrew that displayed bitmap graphics on a Vectrex.
Oscilloscopes FTW!
I love mine....
@@Rhythmattica Oh yeah that's true, a lot of oscilloscopes even today use these types of displays. So I guess they aren't entirely in the dustbin of history.
For that matter, arguably the first video game ever made was a ping-pong game hacked onto an oscilloscope, so you could say that vector graphics were the FIRST video game graphics.
There is so much to learn about the world in slow mo. Thank you Gav for sharing your findings and promoting curiosity!
If anyone is curious about how this works from a technical level, Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a video on the Atari Quadrascan and it's really interesting to see how it works and how different is from traditional rasterized game rendering.
Never stop doing what you do, everything is quality and simply amazing to see.
I miss you and Dan! Can't wait for another UA-cam sponsored run. I know UA-cam Red is dead, but we need an 8 episode seasons/series(8 weeks), every 6 months.
Ill pay the channel $20 a year for that! SOOOOO WORTH IT!
Oh my God I forgot about Red lol
What's happened to Dan?
That CRT is like watching a CNC machine go at an extreme speed but also with extreme precision
I miss Dan I haven't seen him for a while, he was one of the Slow Mo Guys and now this channel should be named, The Slow Mo Guy
When one lives in England and the other in Texas it’s kinda hard to film together during COVID.
I love this mini story about Dan’s travels in the pinned comments every video!
That's a lot of neck hair xD
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far down before a comment mentioned Gavin’s neck hair!
I really didn’t want to be “that guy” and comment on his appearance of all things when the video’s content was so interesting and informative, but my GOD were my eyes immediately drawn to it when the SimpliSafe ad started around 6:30! I couldn’t look away 😆
The weirdest part is that the rest of his beard seems at least somewhat manicured! I wonder if he was growing it out on purpose or somehow forgot about his neck while shaving? Or maybe his electric razor died halfway through?
It’s so stupid and unimportant and inconsequential, and yet here I am typing an entire comment about it because I need to know why it is the way it is now 🤦🏻♂️
Tempest was back then and remains today my absolute favorite arcade game of all time.
I love vector based graphics, my logo is a svg. Infinitely scalable 😁
When will you compare all the other types of screens? This was definitely cool to watch!
I did vector laser images with a HeNe laser and mechanical galvo scanners in the 80s that I choreographed to music. (classical laser light show)
I take out a projector on Halloween each year.
I use the Radio Shack Color Computer with SW I wrote and used General scanning Galvos. It used the 6809 and a clock around 900kHz. In the display processor I was squeezing clock cycles to to some rotations real-time.
..
I though about writing an Asteroids game, but moved on to other things. . .
I still have my Vectrex, I still play it, and I still think there’s something magical about vector displays.