Review Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Review: Queen of the Castle

[JarredWaltonGPU]

It's funny because no matter how big the development team is, or how advanced the game engine is, or how fast the CPU/GPU is, or how much money you throw at a project, video games are still limited to 2D.

So your pricing figures indicate that 2D entertainment has become very expensive over the years, and that the updated graphics are just a decoy to hide the fact there's been no real progress even though prices have skyrocketed.

Can you imagine what developers and publishers would charge if it was truly 3D entertainment? You'd have to pay them just to breath.

All of the computations for computer graphics are done in 3D. The problem is we don't have 3D displays — and I'm not talking stereoscopic junk that doesn't look great and often has compatibility issues. Assuming we had 3D holographic outputs, it would actually simplify much of the computational work because then the game engines wouldn't actually need to do the transform projections that convert 3D worlds to a 2D planar output.

You may as well complain about how it's funny that, no matter how much vehicles have improved over the years, they're still limited to navigating our world in 3D. Where are my 4D and 5D options!?

 

[-Fran-]

All of the computations for computer graphics are done in 3D. The problem is we don't have 3D displays — and I'm not talking stereoscopic junk that doesn't look great and often has compatibility issues. Assuming we had 3D holographic outputs, it would actually simplify much of the computational work because then the game engines wouldn't actually need to do the transform projections that convert 3D worlds to a 2D planar output.

You may as well complain about how it's funny that, no matter how much vehicles have improved over the years, they're still limited to navigating our world in 3D. Where are my 4D and 5D options!?

Well, VR is the closest you can argue "3D rendering" is at, since you do get per-eye rendering (caveat'ed, of course).

Does it matter though? The math is, mostly, the same behind the scenes? They're just different rendering techniques per-devices.

Regards.

 

[GirardW]

You may as well complain about how it's funny that, no matter how much vehicles have improved over the years, they're still limited to navigating our world in 3D. Where are my 4D and 5D options!?

Cars are still limited to navigating the world in 3D because the world itself is 3D (so no surprise there) and cars aren't just for entertainment purposes.

3D isn't trying to become 2D or 4D (3D is obviously happy being 3D) it's 2D that's trying to be 3D and 4D (and failing miserably at it).

With all the technological improvements, and hype, over the years, everybody seems to be ignoring the fact that it's still 2D and yet it keeps increasing in price.

TL;DR 2D entertainment has no depth to it, so why is it so expensive?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

TL;DR 2D entertainment has no depth to it, so why is it so expensive?

If you don't think "3D" games have a depth component, I can't help you. You're literally arguing that the earth is flat with that kind of logic, and you completely missed my point with the cars analogy.

Literally every 3D engine has x,y,z components for every point on every triangle. That roughly translates to width, height, and depth. Doing a mathematical projection to convert the 3D data into a 2D image is required because our displays are 2D, but the world represented by the 2D images is still 3D. It's not the fault of GPUs that we don't have 3D outputs, but rather the complexity of creating useful 3D holographic environments.

And in fact, some companies have created 3D projectors. Guess what? They use the same data that the GPUs are already generating, except then they don't need to do the 3D to 2D projection. That we need additional hardware in GPUs to do the 3D to 2D projections quickly just makes GPUs more expensive, if anything.

 

[GirardW]

If you don't think "3D" games have a depth component, I can't help you. You're literally arguing that the earth is flat with that kind of logic, and you completely missed my point with the cars analogy.

Literally every 3D engine has x,y,z components for every point on every triangle. That roughly translates to width, height, and depth. Doing a mathematical projection to convert the 3D data into a 2D image is required because our displays are 2D, but the world represented by the 2D images is still 3D. It's not the fault of GPUs that we don't have 3D outputs, but rather the complexity of creating useful 3D holographic environments.

And in fact, some companies have created 3D projectors. Guess what? They use the same data that the GPUs are already generating, except then they don't need to do the 3D to 2D projection. That we need additional hardware in GPUs to do the 3D to 2D projections quickly just makes GPUs more expensive, if anything.

I'm pretty sure the earth is 3D not 2D and I also know that 3D engines have x, y, z co-ordinates just like a true 3D world does. But 3D engines, no matter how complex and shiny they are, still answer to a 2D screen which sits in-between the end user and the 3D engine and because you're only as strong as the weakest link, 3D engines are really only 2D at the end of the day.

Even if you had vivid 3D holographic images whch you could walk around you would still lack basic things that a true 3D world has, such as touch, smell and taste etc. and let's not forget that fictional characters aren't actually real so they lack depth too.

I just think it's funny how much attention 2D gets and how expensive it is when it's not at all advanced or cutting edge. It's modern by dark age standards, but by native 3D standards 2D is crude and archaic. That's where the hype machine comes in, to hide that fact that people are standing in line paying thousands for something that's really only 2D. It's funny and sad at the same time.

I guess when people say "progress" they mean the size of the price tag which is now huge yet the fundamentals haven't changed.

TL;DR 2D entertainment is way, way overpriced.