Arcade Machines look WEIRD in Slow Mo - The Slow Mo Guys

[@theslowmoguys]

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.

[@tomstravels520]

Another $200 on black?

[@zesanurrahman6778]

what a coincidence I was thinking about yesterday whats inside arcade and its like a old pc. lol

[@nicholasvinen]

He should have made a left turn at Albuquerque!

[@BelieveThePanda]

Big money! Big money! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes!

[@GenericaQwerty]

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 😂😂

[@OfficialMaxBox]

I so appreciate you replaying the first slow-mo but with the image being persistent. Immediately satisfied the thought as it arised.

[@MrE_]

Yes

[@lazernarwhall]

upload plz :)

[@timbarrier2071]

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).

[@timbarrier2071]

🤣🤣still love their content tho.🤪

[@ameenbaig8726]

*arose

[@smartereveryday]

Persistence of vision is awesome

[@Cavothain]

No

[@yelwinaung1608]

It is. That's what allows us to play these games.

[@fusionsigh]

Hi

[@knutolabersas5601]

you are awesome.

[@Ki113dbysw0rd]

it's kind of the leading factor why LED lighting isn't horrendous to us in its current form

[@brooscccc]

It's actually crazy to me that this kind of ultra fast technology existed 40 years ago

[@redpheonix1000]

It also really goes to show that you don't need much to fool our eyes!

[@andybalthazar]

Right!! If you’re talking about CRT, that goes way back 80 years. Proof time travelers exist.

[@benslack8056]

Well people landed on the moon 50 years ago so not that crazy 🦫

[@limdaoyuan7218]

@@G.Freeman92 you are prob just a troll

[@thedickghost]

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.

[@benjaminsmith3625]

Good timing to mention Mat/Techmoan. His video today is a "scope clock" with vector graphics on an oscilloscope tube.

[@theslowmoguys]

Haha what are the chances!

[@gris4985]

@@theslowmoguys A Techmoan/Slow Mo Guys colab would be great, that guy has a veritable treasure chest of cool vintage tech.

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@gris4985 What does a Nixie tube look like in slo-mo? I'd like to see that.

[@TimWochomurka]

@@jasonblalock4429 i second this

[@BLenz-114]

@@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.

[@BilisNegra]

"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.

[@EyMannMachHin]

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]

What Mat are you referring to?

[@BilisNegra]

@@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-.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

@@BilisNegra Highly appreciate the recommendation!

[@Gary_Hun]

To me, the mentioning of Techmoan came out of total nowhere, is there any occasion where they crossed paths that you may know of?

[@TexasGreed]

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.

[@WhoLover]

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

[@creativenamegoeshere2562]

@@AxxLAfriku ?

[@protonneutron9046]

back when people knew how to program well.

[@creativenamegoeshere2562]

@@protonneutron9046 people still program well, just with different software and hardware.

[@protonneutron9046]

@@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.

[@3DPDK]

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.

[@Carstuff111]

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.

[@Observ45er]

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]

do you have any reference for the claim that there were shapes, text and images on any oscilloscope at the turn of 1900.

[@3DPDK]

@@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.

[@hansiraber]

​@@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.

[@iluvpwny7565]

Just thinking about how programmer back then coded something like this with such a limited resources gave me a chill.

[@AlRoderick]

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.

[@Wabajak13]

How cool would it be to invent something like this 40 years ago and then just now be able to see it slowed down

[@DeathBringer769]

Necessity is the mother of invention. Having too much resources can actually be crippling, ironically enough.

[@vidarton]

@@Wabajak13 you could of course tune the scan speed down in your engine :) but I get what you were going for

[@hardwirecars]

@@DeathBringer769 ea vs an indie dev

[@King_Geedorah]

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!

[@BLenz-114]

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.

[@AutPen38]

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.

[@mazda9624]

5:25 is one of the funniest moments I've seen on KZbin just because of all the other arcade cabinets being normal and then Tempest just doing it's own thing

[@Wabajak13]

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.

[@jasonblalock4429]

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.

[@Observ45er]

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. . .

[@evilcartmensolo7198]

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.

[@perrymalcolm3802]

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

[@GenericaQwerty]

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 😂

[@melvinest]

YES!

[@Eledore]

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!

[@edaskire9917]

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.

[@qmangillett]

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.

[@NicolaiAAA]

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.

[@Tom55data]

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.

[@EddieOtool]

I am amazed at the speed all of this happens. Unfathomable. Way more impressive to me than refreshing a "simple" grid of dots.

[@smeghead666]

This filled in a void i had in my head for years as to how vector graphics worked

[@JackSilver1410]

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.

[@heyturnkey]

Tempest is my favorite childhood arcade game.. thank you

[@redandblue1013]

“Hello I’m Gav.” *…* It just ain’t the same 😔

[@createausernametrue]

The slow mo guy

[@mikej557]

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.

[@imjody]

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! 😁

[@SeanBZA]

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.

[@ScorelessPine]

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: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qZ62pXiGiLd-eNU 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: kzbin.info

[@Cyromantik]

Great recommendation, thanks!

[@wilting_alocasia]

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!

[@pthelo]

I missed it - what happened to Dan?

[@RegularOldDan]

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!

[@cloverasx]

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.

[@sethchapman8001]

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.

[@shoesncheese]

Same. I was also terrible at Tempest. I dropped so many quarters on these.

[@brookeggleston9314]

@@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!

[@GeezerRay]

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.

[@jamesslick4790]

In the 80's "Tempest" was my best game. I held the whole "High Score" list on three different machines at one time, LOL.

[@brookeggleston9314]

Same!!!

[@1mariomaniac]

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.

[@Bigelowbrook]

When I was a kid, I put many quarters into Tempest and Battle Zone. Good times....

[@CraigPetersen12f36b]

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.

[@drivers99]

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.

[@Raze_134]

I've never seen graphics like this before. That Star Wars game an Tempest look like a lot of fun

[@brookewestonctc]

I remember seeing that Star Wars game in a cinema decades ago. It looked increadible, so much sharper than anything else.

[@mixtlillness9825]

Those games were fun to play back in the day.

[@cowsareinme]

This is INCREDIBLE I have been making oscilloscope art and it works the exact same way!

[@AndersEngerJensen]

Nice to see Techmoan mentioned. 😁🤓

[@dallynsr]

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.

[@El_Smeghead]

Nice Techmoan shoutout. Love that guy!

[@recklessroges]

Vectrex filled in the blocks of colour with transparent overlay sheets like an over-head projector.

[@El_Smeghead]

I always knew there was something different about the display on these type of games. Thanks for the info Gav 👍👍

[@GonzoDonzo]

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

[@alanshurvinton9578]

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.

[@dfpguitar]

never knew these type of games existed in 1981. I thought it would be really flat and dull looking stuff but this is gorgeous.

[@LunDruid]

I've always loved vector graphics.

[@that1geekychick]

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.

[@jeremypnet]

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.

[@jasonblalock4429]

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.

[@HenryLoenwind]

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.

[@AutPen38]

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.

[@geoptus]

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...!

[@JamesHBall]

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 :)

[@andrewwmitchell]

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.

[@namemycactus]

This is not only very cool to watch but very interesting to learn about. Gav's a great teacher lol

[@thenamelessnpc1000]

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

[@SullySadface]

Tempest is hypnotizing, even on a 50hz camera

[@jaimejimenez8858]

There is so much to learn about the world in slow mo. Thank you Gav for sharing your findings and promoting curiosity!

[@JackVance5]

This is somehow way more impressive to me than modern screens

[@MarkEichin]

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.

[@blackdragonslp]

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.

[@EyMannMachHin]

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.

[@RailRide]

@@EyMannMachHin It happened in 2010 at Anthrocon: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWmUdZV5lq-FsJI

[@N4CR]

@@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.

[@skinwalker69420]

So essentially, these things are oscilloscopes that play video games. Fascinating.

[@angrypotato_fz]

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.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

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.

[@Observ45er]

@@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. . .

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

@@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...

[@voltz15]

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.

[@WhoLover]

And vector was 80's technology. Imagine what we could do now.

[@Retrotude]

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.

[@WhoLover]

@@Retrotude absolutely, but imagine if someone used modern technology to build something new like vector from the ground up

[@Wabajak13]

Imagine a vector type projector. Except then I think you'd have to paint your walls in phosphor.

[@brookewestonctc]

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.

[@brookewestonctc]

@@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.

[@harryswanson2530]

Dan would love this

[@36SOAD817HMC]

i know dan braught all the joy to this channel this other guy is only about facts not fun. .

[@JamieAubrey]

I'll keep using this joke Somewhere: "And I'm Dan" Dan: "NOT AGAIN"

[@Gosuminer]

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.

[@dennism644]

Fascinating. Love this channel.

[@AlphaShadow115]

Never stop doing what you do, everything is quality and simply amazing to see.

[@Charlie-dx6bv]

Well this shines a new light on arcade games!

[@Z3t487]

@ТоммуFan 🅥 No.

[@StraX22]

Games like Centuri’s Aztarac and Quantum by Atari used some absurdly fast vector monitors that could “fill-in” shapes for solid colors.

[@D44RK_Iced_Yogs]

I haven’t watched you dudes in forever! I remember when you two dudes were just in ur backyard filming!

[@ForgottenAria]

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.

[@Observ45er]

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. . .

[@Plague_Doc22]

3:48 This wound be a sick screen saver.

[@JohnDoeHZ]

It's a relief to hear CRT again and have it still mean Cathode Ray Tube instead of that fabricated controversy. 😂

[@zane_slade]

I really miss Dan

[@BheemNationalist]

What happened to him?

[@randomness420]

@Zeloric covid restrictionists make it impossible for them to see each other,., It’s as stupid as it sounds

[@JayGee6996]

@@damienallbran strange how they’ve not even done one though

[@D44RK_Iced_Yogs]

@@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

[@Nayson]

@@BheemNationalist abducted by aliens. (Stuck in England because Covid)

[@sadsismint]

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?!

[@KnockOut101inc]

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

[@gracengeier1149]

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 :)

[@Sheridantank]

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.

[@Airdorn]

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! :)

[@patrickradvanyi6390]

did they ever make a hybrid display, one that used the vector for the objects and the scanning for the background?

[@brookewestonctc]

You mean with two elecron beams? I don't think that would be possible, as magnetic fields are used to bend the beams, and the fields would interfere with eachother. If you meant with a single electron beam, then that would be massively inefficient, as it could only be doing a raster update or a vector update, but not both.

[@patrickradvanyi6390]

@@brookewestonctc what if they each hit from a different angle, say one is 45 degrees below the screen and the other is 45 degrees above the screen.

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

Vectrex has a vector screen but draws the text font in raster graphics over it in software.

[@TheMopaomokonzi]

Slow Mo Guys Can you do a video about welding. I know it might be difficult du to light but might be interesting to see how material is deposited or is melted to form a metallic weld

[@Deckard-ig4qd]

This makes me want to see a Vectrex working in slow mo (although it's probably very similar I suppose)

[@StormsparkPegasus]

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?"

[@carylittleford8980]

Yes, and some of the homebrew that displayed bitmap graphics on a Vectrex.

[@Rhythmattica]

Oscilloscopes FTW! I love mine....

[@StormsparkPegasus]

@@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.

[@jasonblalock4429]

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.

[@SebastianSylwan]

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

[@Stoney_Eagle]

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!

[@Observ45er]

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. . .

[@ndmusick11]

I like this series. Can't wait to see DLP projectors. Hope you can get or rent the different styles. Three trip one for each color (Cinema) Single chip with 7 segment color wheel And the newer LED single chip. Shoot throw in a laser projector too

[@coconutmallman]

To be honest CRT displays amaze me more than any other technology we have today

[@KayOSweaver]

I loved Battle Zone and Star Wars when I was a kid at the arcade. Seeing them here brought back fun memories.

[@kaukospots]

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.

[@RonLaws]

loved it! Vector graphics have always had their own visual charm among all the raster graphics

[@McFlyOrPie]

I miss you and Dan! Can't wait for another KZbin sponsored run. I know KZbin 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!

[@darkblades1201]

Oh my God I forgot about Red lol

[@oscartomlinson11]

What's happened to Dan?

[@lnyenhuis3765]

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 .

[@shadowldrago]

Where do you guys think Dan's tunnel is at by now?

[@heroclix0rz]

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.

[@_AntonioRipoll]

#BringBackDANtheMAN

[@romanb.6528]

I finally found a video showing the beam traversal in a vector monitor. Thank you very much!!!

[@Sophistry0001]

I wonder if developers for vector graphics games had to consider how long each element on screen takes to draw, and if they had too much stuff that took too long to draw that it could bog down the TV and start to look like flickering to us. I wonder if that's why they couldn't just have the machine fill in the inside of shapes.

[@brookewestonctc]

I was thinking the same thing. They don't have a frame rate like traditional games do. Other games have to fit all their processing in to the time it takes for a frame to update, while these don't have that limitation, and just draw as soon as they're ready. There has to be some sort of internal timing to keep the gameplay speed consistent (other games used the refresh rate - it's why PAL Sonic plays slower than NTSC Sonic), so I guess they can't exceed that.

[@crusty.computer]

Absolutely. The advantage of vector graphics were that you could draw a lot of lines on the screen really fast, but you had to worry about being able to finish drawing the complete frame before the phosphor started fading out, otherwise your display would flicker horribly.

[@Sophistry0001]

@@crusty.computer So it's like a draw time budget in terms of how many graphical elements are on screen at any given time. Interesting stuff, I knew CRT electron beams and all that but I didn't realize vector graphics were fundamentally different in that regard

[@Observ45er]

@@Sophistry0001 Yes we did. It was a major consideration. My system has a 4 ms time from stop to stop, for one line. It limited the number of points and you had to decide how much flicker you would allow. .. I have faster scanners, but moved on before I ever built up enough to use them .. 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. . .

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

Some Vectrex games do start to flicker in situations with much on screen.

[@InfVR]

One fact you didn't talk about is that the time the screen needs to take to draw an image on vectographs depends on how many elements currently are renderered unless on a traditional CRT which scanne from top to bottom. You can actually see the frames taking longer and shorter time to draw in the footage. Sometimes the screen turns black at faster intervals as at other times. That's also exactly why everything on a vectograph screen tends to be hollow bc if you would fill everything out, the time to draw 1frame would take too long.

[@RolandSchlosser]

That's a lot of neck hair xD

[@PhillyWilly18]

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 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@BaZzZaa]

Always wanted to see a colour vector monitor in slow motion. Bloody awesome.

[@Observ45er]

I could slow my system down to whatever I wanted: . 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. . .

[@BaZzZaa]

@@Observ45er That sounds awesome!