Playing with video game systems is one of the most popular forms of entertainment. With the advancement in graphics and sound technology, you will see that video games today can really take you inside the game itself and makes you feel as if you were actually the character you are playing.
However, before all the state-of-the-art and realistic graphics and sound effects that you see in today’s latest video game systems, it all started out with simple graphics and sound that were in its time, state-of-the-art.
You should realize that the evolution of video game systems only took more or less 30 years to get where it is now. Thanks to the advancement in communications, graphics, and also sound technology, many video games today offers first class entertainment.
The very first video games system that appeared in the market was created by Nutting Associates. This video game is the first coin-operated arcade video game called Computer Space. This video game was invented in 1970 and is considered to be the beginning of the evolution of video games.
The next company to release a video game is Magnavox in 1972. The company named it Odyssey 100 video game systems. Unlike the Computer Space arcade video game, Odyssey 100 video game system is a video game that can be attached to a standard television. This feature allowed everyone to play video games right at the comforts of their own home. Because of this feature, almost 100,000 units of the system were sold for 100 dollars each. Read more... (1374 words, 1 image, estimated 5:30 mins reading time)
Games
Games, History, Video
The use of computer graphics can be traced as far back as 1940, when Jay Forrester at M.I.T. designed equipment for training new pilots. The digital computer was chosen as the ideal instrument, because of its adaptability and the flexibility with which the machine could be programmed. It was not until a few years later that a radar defense system project named Whirlwind showed the first practical use of computer graphics (see fig. 1.2). Whirlwind is a computer linked to radar sites, and it displays an electronic map of the location on its monitor with plot blips that represent incoming airplanes. Whirlwind is the first vacuum-tube computer capable of drawing lines and points on a computer screen.
In 1958, an experimental filmmaker, John Whitney, Sr.,created a short animation by using the analog computer to control the movement of the character. Whitney used the same system to create the opening title sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Later Whitney and his brother produced more films based on similar techniques.
In 1957, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) opened its company with only three employees. Three years later, DEC introduced the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor), the world’s first small interactive computer (see Fig. 1.3). DEC has played a huge role in the development of computer graphics. “The Programmed Data Processor (PDP-1) is a high-speed, solid state digital computer designed to operate with many types of input-output devices with no internal machine changes. It is a single address, single instruction, and stored program computer with powerful program features. Five-megacycle circuits, a magnetic core memory and fully parallel processing make possible a computation rate of 100,000 additions per second. The PDP-1 is unusually versatile. Read more... (958 words, estimated 3:50 mins reading time)
Computer
Brief, Computer, Graphics, History
