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Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

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Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#61

Post by codesushi42 »

nothis wrote: post #47
anaphor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had people tell me all of the extra bloat/slowness in modern software is because it has more features, and because accessibility / localization is a thing more often. I'm not sure I actually believe that's true. Maybe accessibility and localization contributes to bloat/slowness, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be much much more efficient and keep the same features.

The numbers don’t really add up. Computers are a hundred times (replace with actual value, but it should work even for a 10x increase) faster, yet the feature set hasn’t increased by anywhere near that factor. Also “feature” is a big word, usually a single feature doesn’t even eat up that much performance. I think it’s rather — just as Moore’s Law — a psychological phenomenon rather than a mathematical one. There’s j…

Exactly this. Anyone who was gaming and "websurfing" back in the 90s will recognize that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse.

And that view isn't a psychological rewrite of the past. I regularly game on systems from both the 90s and modern day, and the load times for modern games are usually much worse than the CD games of old. The funny thing is that people would complain like crazy about CD load times back then, even citing it as a reason why CDs could never become mainstream.

And yet, here we are present day with obscenely shitty load times for most software.

I think the one area that has improved dramatically has been video streaming though. Real Player and the like were terrible even for their time.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#62

Post by codesushi42 »

bitwize wrote: post #59
codesushi42 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Software nowadays is atrocious because it's not optimized. It's just that average users have become more accepting of long load times and bloat. Here's an example. In the mid to late 90s, gamers would complain a lot about load times for CD ROM games. For some gamers, the load times were a deal breaker. This was one reason Nintendo could get away with using cartridges on the N64. Fast forward to the presen…

The N64 lost its console generation and solidified Sony as the market leader, in part because it used cartridges while everyone else used CD-ROMs. Way to choose an example that disproves the very point you were trying to make. As for load times today, most modern games are implemented as scripts and assets for one of the big engines, usually Unreal or Unity. It's hard enough to manage all the assets that go into a mo…

The N64 lost its console generation and solidified Sony as the market leader, in part because it used cartridges while everyone else used CD-ROMs. Way to choose an example that disproves the very point you were trying to make.

Yes, I realize that. But the point was that poor decision was not enough to kill it, and the N64 was still a commercial success. A lot of gamers even preferred cartridges back then because of they didn't require load time.

As for load times today, most modern games are implemented as scripts and assets for one of the big engines, usually Unreal or Unity. It's hard enough to manage all the assets that go into a modern game; an optimized loader would just make wrangling them all even more difficult.

That's not a real reason to not optimize.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#64

Post by [deleted] »

naikrovek wrote: post #21
ArtWomb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People take for granted that an app responds in milliseconds. Engineers at Google, et al, of course immediately recognized that performance was tied to adoption in the early days and left no stone unturned in their quest for optimizations. The analogy today in portable devices is maybe with battery life drain during game play.

I think with search results you're right, and with things like GMail it seems performance is at the bottom of the priority list. Perhaps even off of the priority list entirely.

[deleted]

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#65

Post by grawprog »

codesushi42 wrote: post #61
nothis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers don’t really add up. Computers are a hundred times (replace with actual value, but it should work even for a 10x increase) faster, yet the feature set hasn’t increased by anywhere near that factor. Also “feature” is a big word, usually a single feature doesn’t even eat up that much performance. I think it’s rather — just as Moore’s Law — a psychological phenomenon rather than a mathematical one. There’s j…

Exactly this. Anyone who was gaming and "websurfing" back in the 90s will recognize that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse . And that view isn't a psychological rewrite of the past. I regularly game on systems from both the 90s and modern day, and the load times for modern games are usually much worse than the CD games of old. The funny thing is that people would complain l…

>that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse.

Uhhhh, well I don't tend to wait 3-5 minutes for a single .jpeg to load on a website any more. I can stream a hq video in real time over the internet, whereas downloading a single 30MB realmedia video so pixelated you could barely see what was on the screen would take an hour or more to download. A 3MB mp3 would take 5-10 minutes. There have been massive speed increases in web surfing for sure. I don't understand how anyone that used the web back then could think otherwise.

As for software load speed, the amount of data being loaded off a CD for a 2d or older 3d game is magnitudes smaller than the data being loaded from modern games. How many gigabytes of high res textures did those old games used to load? How many uncompressed HQ sound effects and music tracks? I remember installing multi-CD games and waiting and waiting,.then swapping the disc, then waiting then waiting, then back to disc one, more waiting, now disc 3.

I'm not saying those things are better, but there's no way in hell my old 486 could have loaded multiple gigabytes of data at the same speed my laptop or even my phone now does.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#66

Post by codesushi42 »

grawprog wrote: post #65
codesushi42 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Anyone who was gaming and "websurfing" back in the 90s will recognize that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse . And that view isn't a psychological rewrite of the past. I regularly game on systems from both the 90s and modern day, and the load times for modern games are usually much worse than the CD games of old. The funny thing is that people would complain l…

>that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse. Uhhhh, well I don't tend to wait 3-5 minutes for a single .jpeg to load on a website any more. I can stream a hq video in real time over the internet, whereas downloading a single 30MB realmedia video so pixelated you could barely see what was on the screen would take an hour or more to download. A 3MB mp3 would take 5-10 minutes. Th…

Uhhhh, well I don't tend to wait 3-5 minutes for a single .jpeg to load on a website any more.

That was not true on 56k in the late 90s. On a baud modem in 93, sure, but I wasn't talking about that.

As for software load speed, the amount of data being loaded off a CD for a 2d or older 3d game is magnitudes smaller than the data being loaded from modern games.

Irrelevant. The amount of multimedia on a CD was vastly more than the main memory available at the time. Plus you didn't have multi cores, SSD storage (or any HD) etc.

No one optimizes anymore, and it shows.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#67

Post by Accujack »

slowhand09 wrote: post #48
Accujack wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Present day programs aren't optimized because they don't have to be. No one needs to gain a competitive advantage by squeezing the last bit of performance out of hardware because for a long time we've had steadily increasing performance levels and backward compatibility. Applications which need more performance than the present level of hardware can deliver so badly that they need to optimize to that level are very r…

I would disagree with the "they don't need to be" stmt. Many photographers and artist have legit gripes in the lengthy time many filters and transforms take in post processing. Many of these are recipes that are applied en-masse to all files in a directory.

Well, I was obviously generalizing, not stating that no programs anywhere need to run faster.

However, taking your example, the filters can't really be optimized because they're applications run on top of a bloated operating system which isn't optimized for the reasons I mentioned.

Writing a highly optimized program to run directly on the hardware of a given machine would speed up filters tremendously but also be a trade-off in terms of manageability.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#69

Post by scarecrowbob »

codesushi42 wrote: post #61
nothis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers don’t really add up. Computers are a hundred times (replace with actual value, but it should work even for a 10x increase) faster, yet the feature set hasn’t increased by anywhere near that factor. Also “feature” is a big word, usually a single feature doesn’t even eat up that much performance. I think it’s rather — just as Moore’s Law — a psychological phenomenon rather than a mathematical one. There’s j…

Exactly this. Anyone who was gaming and "websurfing" back in the 90s will recognize that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse . And that view isn't a psychological rewrite of the past. I regularly game on systems from both the 90s and modern day, and the load times for modern games are usually much worse than the CD games of old. The funny thing is that people would complain l…

I dunno... I recall loading stuff off cassette tapes onto C64.

But I was there in the 90s, too.

Sure, the load times on an NES are better than, say Fallout 4, but I remember starting up Ultima 8 for the first time and that was some sincere amount of wait.

I think that things are much better now, at least in the few games I've played in the last couple of years (Bioshock, Detroit: Become Human, Fallout 4, Red Dead II). The content is way more developed, and instead of loading a pile of floppies, I just wait for it to DL what it has to do. Granted that takes a while, but at least I don't have to hand feed it.

Re: Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

#70

Post by codesushi42 »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #69
codesushi42 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Anyone who was gaming and "websurfing" back in the 90s will recognize that load times today are no better than back then, and are often times much worse . And that view isn't a psychological rewrite of the past. I regularly game on systems from both the 90s and modern day, and the load times for modern games are usually much worse than the CD games of old. The funny thing is that people would complain l…

I dunno... I recall loading stuff off cassette tapes onto C64. But I was there in the 90s, too. Sure, the load times on an NES are better than, say Fallout 4, but I remember starting up Ultima 8 for the first time and that was some sincere amount of wait. I think that things are much better now, at least in the few games I've played in the last couple of years (Bioshock, Detroit: Become Human, Fallout 4, Red Dead II)…

The content is way more developed, and instead of loading a pile of floppies

Ahhhh ok you got me there. Floppies were terrible, and playing games on a low end DOS machine was terribly slow. I have played modern games that were about as frustrating though, but only if they're completely broken.

I was referring to game consoles though. Load times on Sega CD on 3DO were terrible for the time and turned off a lot of consumers back then (though not the only reason those platforms failed, they were just the slowest of the bunch). But the load times in modern games is typically far worse than those systems ever saw.

I switch between modern and retro era systems frequently, and I find modern load times embarrassing given what people were up in arms about back then.

Jonathon Blow tends to agree with me, FWIW. Check out some of his talks on the lack of optimization in modern software if you have the chance. Modern software should be a lot faster than it is given the hardware capabilities, according to him too.

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