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Computer Expectations of Today, and a Decade Hence?
Luciq asks: "The other day I was cleaning out my closet and started reminiscing about all the good times I had with my 33Mhz 486DX. I got the machine 10 years ago just as the first Pentiums were coming out. With a 33Mhz processor, 212MB hard drive and a whopping 8MB of RAM, I could surf the net at 2400 baud, manipulate photos and even play games with full-screen video like The Seventh Guest. Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512MB [not 512K!] RAM. While I can do some neat things with it, I must say that it's fallen short of the wonderous expectations I had for such a system in 1993 (no immersive VR?, no seamless voice recognition?). What expectations did you have for today's PC, 10 years ago and how does the reality match up? What do you expect from computing, 10 years from now?"
...90% of hardware improvements are essentially wasted by programmer inefficiency.
Look at those amazing 4K demos that people did (and stll do) for DOS. People are doing wild stuff here-- things like real-time pseudo-3D rendering, fractals, you name it-- all inside of 4 kilobytes of code. And most of these demos will run just as well on a '286 or (at most) '386 than today's space-heater chips.
Contiki is a lovely example of what can be done with efficient coding. In my experience, this sort of efficiency is NEVER achieved today in "commercial" projects or even in OSS/FS code-- people never even come close. The only areas of computing which have seen significant improvements (I don't just mean "more widgets" or "better interfaces" (the latter has nothing to do with hardware improvements, so don't even mention it)) in recent years have been:
* Gaming (perhaps the only area where efficiency is even SOMEWHAT appreciated, as it leads to higher FPS)
* Rendering (ditto)
* Real-time scientific simulations
In 1980, I could flip on an Apple II and have a usable prompt inside of a second or two. Nowadays, even with a screamin' P4 or Duron will get you a 30-second startup time-- if you're lucky. That's just to boot up the OS. Wanna start a word processor? That'll take even longer.
If you want to get a sense of what MY expectations were that were shattered, go grab a good Apple II emulator and some appropriate software and fire the emulator up. Make sure that it's running at the full possible speed-- not "compatible" speed (which is 1.02MHz, if I remember correctly). Look at how fast stuff runs... and that's in emulation. Sure, there's no fancy GUI, there's no clippy, whatever you think "modern" OSes have to have... but the point is that even in emulation, old stuff runs REALLY, REALLY FAST. If the same mentality of "efficiency is everything" that was necessary during the days of limited hardware power was voluntarily adopted today... well... imagine Windows XP starting up in one second (and not crashing). Imagine being able to swap cool new games on floppy disks. Imagine most games being distributed on Mini CDs, even those with lots of videos and speech, since a full (650-700MB) CD would be overkill for them.
Then wake up and realize it's time to go buy some more RAM again... ho hum...BillG just raised the bar on hardware requirements. Back to the treadmill we go...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
from my experience, computer technology is mostly driven by computer games.
anyone can still type up a letter using an old computer. science/research are adapting to what's currently available, rather than creating the needs, but i might be wrong.
on the other hand, not many game developers are still writing games for the current computers, instead, manufacturers are trying to come out with something so that their consumers can finally play GTA3 smoothly.
so a question to answer your question - what do you expect to see in computer games in the future.
Real expectations:
There, you asked.
I disagree with the common case that "all games today are eye candy and the real innovation was in the 80's etc."
Of course, there are games that are manufacturered purely to capitalize on a market. Such as games based on movies and tv shows (who wants to be a millionaire rings a bell). However, there are games out there that are breath-taking in an eye candy sense and also in a game sense.
For example, Quake III Arena might be remembered for it's graphics but it also brought multi player internet gaming to a whole new level.
Half life may be a similar concept but it has really brought game hacking and modifications forward. Maybe not truely novel concepts (quakeI had internet play and ID was allowing users to hack their games for a while) but they really created their own cult followings and people play those games for hours just as people played the paralax scrolling games of the late 80's early 90's for hours too.
What about GTA and the ever so popular vice city? I think vice city is probably THE perfect game (for me anyway). It combines so many different types of games into one: role playing, fighting, racing, mission based, shoot-em-up, business etc. Plus it brings you into this whole virtual culture and world where every detail from the people on the side walks to the radio stations are considered. Making it more of an interactive movie that sucks you in and keeps you there.
How about The Sims? Another novel concept. My wife still plays that game for hours at a time. She's got her own little neighbourhood kicking where she can control everything and build up her characters etc. What do you call that kind of game? Role playing? Simulation? I'm not so sure. I definitely don't remember any games in the 80's and early 90's having a game concept like that.
The fact is that gaming is just like any other business. The people who are there to capitalize on it want to market proven products that aren't so risk based. So you do get a lot of games comming out that just seem to be the same as last month's big eye candy. You see this in movies and music and television too. But don't neglect the games that do bring new concepts forward. They're there, you just have to notice them.
- Garett
Did anyone see the DMCA or RIAA legal pack of business coming ten years from now? Just think of what life in the future will be like post-resolution-of-said-issues. Orrin Hatch wants to crack our cases with destructive virus files...what will electronic entertainment of the future be like?
Cold War II: The Race between Digital Rights and Hackers.