Remember when CGI looked like this?

[@UggyStoopy]

Can we go back to making movies about cyberpunk dystopias and stop living in one? Great video.

[@JNAMOTORSPORTS]

It’s not even “cool” it’s just like cheap Walmart dystopian. We have no flying cars, woke people, what is a woman, and worried about corporations being people. Like we aren’t riding around in Mechs, gundams, or have super powers. It’s the lamest trash 🗑️ like low tech and cheaped out version. Like we haven’t even built anything in the moon and we still don’t really have jet pack. What do we even have that’s the future? Good graphics? AI that steals jobs? Hell even our drugs are crappy and cheaper than ever

[@paulyoung5641]

I wish we lived in a cyberpunk dystopia, we live in a lamepunk dystopia.

[@NexAngelus405]

"We live in a dystopia, but not the cool kind. Like wearing a trench coat and eating noodle soup in the rain at Chinatown cool."

[@CTimmerman]

@@NexAngelus405 Why not? Rainy days are hard on noodle bars, and trench coats should be great against rain.

[@notjackiechan9420]

What do you mean?, everything is fine, we are becoming.. One.. 🤖🐙

[@pikaskew]

That stained glass CGI from Young Sherlock Holmes still holds up remarkably well present day.

[@GLaDOSAngerCore]

Very. I got that movie on VHS in late 80's. Hallucinations were always my favorite scenes as a kid. Nice to see they still rock.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

Hollywood used to be so much better at figuring out how to create an appealing visual aesthetic for each project. We used to see all sorts of different creatures, unique worlds, fever dreams, macabre things, oddities. We used to embrace these things. Now there's this weird fixation on a sort of bland realism? We need to bring back the days when we used to use all sorts of different techniques for VFX's, bring back animation.

[@kingcosworth2643]

The audience is no longer given any credit. It's not just the visuals that have become bland. The movies do not cover any topics of depth or intrigue. A movie like 'A Beautiful Life' showing the Jews been rounded up by the Germans and sent to camps. A brilliant movie and there is no way on earth a movie of such deep subject matter would be made today.

[@thecianinator]

There's no ideological or even creative motivation behind this change that you've noticed. All that's happened is CGI got so much easier that now they can farm it out to countries with worse workers' rights, those workers have to churn out more shots for less money, and producers have more freedom to change their mind and make those workers redo their work, which is not only unethical but also results in a worse product because when a movie has a deadline, changing your mind about a VFX shot means less render time. Back in the 90s it was way harder. Sculpting, animating, and rendering took so long that it all had to be pre-planned and absolutely locked in before the movie was even filmed. The entire production had to be planned around the CGI it was going to include, there was no room for mistakes and there was no changing your mind at the last minute. The only computers in the world that could output these kinds of visuals cost tens of thousands of dollars and could only be operated by technicians and artists who were all highly trained and highly compensated experts in their field. By absolute logistical necessity, a lot more care was put into it.

[@CaptainReynolds-flyinspace]

What was good about these virtual worlds, it was made with understanding the limitation of CG. Its looks better than a computer can do at that time. Its really work of art. How beautiful looks floating dolphin in the Johny Mnemonic movie!

[@smakfu1375]

Thing was, when modeling and laying out the scene, frame by frame, in SoftImage, Lightwave, etc., it was a painstaking process. It had to be thought through carefully, because the rendering previews were incredibly low fidelity. In the early to mid 90's, you were waiting days before you could see a fully rendered and assembled sequency. You also had huge limitations: for motion picture purposes, you had to render at very high resolutions, but rendering nodes in a farm were generally equipped with 32-256MB of RAM, with the entire farm only having 20-30GB of RAM. Additionally, even the fastest CPU's of the era ranged from around 20-80 MFLOPS (for perspective, a Raspberry Pi 5's four ARM CPU cores bench out at about 3,700 double-precision MFLOPS, or 975 MFLOPS per CPU core). This meant that ray tracing wasn't used except in a few specific instances, and texture usage was constrained, forcing artists to design around the limitations. There was a lot more use of color, shading highlights, manually stenciled elements, which gave the CGI of the era that "retro-future" surrealistic vibe.

[@geminijinxies7258]

I dabbled with Sculpt-3D on an Amiga 1000 back in the days and even a simple sphere in low resolution took hours to render. So if someone had told me ray tracing can be done in real time in the future. I would have not believed it!

[@williamdixon-gk2sk]

With all the years of my life spent waiting on digital video editing programs to render back in those days, i can't imagine what working in cgi was like. It's interesting to hear, though.

[@Roxor128]

@@geminijinxies7258 It wouldn't have been too far off in the future, given the Demoscene has been pulling off real-time raytracing since 1995. Is it blurry? Absolutely. But it does indeed run on a Pentium (or DOSBox set to about 40k cycles). Transgression by MFX from 1995 being the first, though its sequel from 1996 is a better demo.

[@geminijinxies7258]

@@Roxor128 That's impressive! I didn't know that, but I only followed the Amiga demoscene during the 80s to early 90s.

[@anthonylosego]

My high school friend had access to a 1 inch frame by frame line by line video recorder. They had a Video Toaster on an Amiga 2000 and used Lightwave to render a 747 animation flying around. Took days. But it also did chroma key real time, so you could blue screen it into live video. It was pretty cool. Somewhere around 1990.

[@michaelbullen3104]

Early CGI was so full of SOUL. Having less to work with really set people up for making some of the most truly surreal and complex animations ever made. Even to this day, the earliest days, 1977-1993, CANNOT be recaptured. Few, if not, none of those programs survive… Coolest part about Lawnmower Man is you can tell it wasn’t made on a 90’s supercomputer… The CGI was most definitely done on an 80’s supercomputer. Which makes it all the more cool to me. The texturing and movements are evident of a Mid- late 80’s build HIGH power build. At the time, nobody knew it was made on dated hardware. All CGi was impressive then

[@Makoto03]

Its hilarious looking back on Lawnmower man but as a 90s kid, i remember thinking that the CGI scenes were really cool. Probably the only thing i remember from the movie. lol

[@zzygyy]

It was awesome!!!

[@sethmaki1333]

I remember when Star Trek started using CGI for space battles and other special effects in 1996 with Deep Space Nine and not only did it look amazing then, but it still holds up and looks realistic three decades later. There's shows and movies being made today that doesn't look as good as the Battle of DS9 that took place in the season four premiere "The Way of the Warrior."

[@williamdixon-gk2sk]

​@sethmaki1333 that might just be my habds down favorite episode of ds9.

[@davidsavage5630]

I remember how the blurb on the Lawnmower Man VHS box said something like "...the best computer special effects since Terminator 2..." And...while that technically WAS true in March (I think) of 1992 when The Lawnmower Man was released...it's funny to see which one holds up NOW and how well. T2 still looks STUNNING despite not looking as "real" as it did back then while The Lawnmower Man looks like a ratty 3DO (if you know, you know lol) cutscene..

[@cyrollan]

one wonders if it was only the kids who liked Lawnmower Man. if i was my current age and that movie came out now, it would be laughable. i think i watched it on VHS with my dad, i wonder if he was cringing the whole time, but hiding it because i was having fun?

[@jasonsamons6700]

were coming full circle because this is what modern CGI is starting to look like

[@thegercast4794]

yeah. it's unfortunate. back in the days of the star wars prequels, or pirates of the caribbean, lord of the rings or prometheus, it actually had a soul, but it's a cheap tool hollywood uses for every single thing now. like, i watched some scenes on youtube from captain america the winter soldier last night and was a little amazed how many practical explosions there were, plus how much better the cg looked than say, she hulk.

[@BaseRealityVR]

Came here for the VR walk down memory lane As I watched all of these films and now sit here developing VR content and projects. Never saw that coming

[@Alex-vu5uu]

I loved and I still love Johnny Mnemonic and Lawnmower Man.

[@adammassacre4715]

3:21 Hey Vasquez...you ever been mistaken for a T-1000

[@RENEG4DE4NGEL]

No. Have you ever asked a T800 about wash day? 😂

[@adammassacre4715]

@RENEG4DE4NGEL it's tomorrow right? 🤪

[@azv343]

No... Have you?

[@Ranzoe813]

_"I just need to know one thing"_

[@MrTVintro]

Hey KZbin, get this man thousands more subscribers.

[@MrVasher]

How cool it looked back then, in the early 90s, when we were kids and saw it for the first time in our lives!!!

[@siotibi827]

Then there is The Abyss, a landmark film that demonstrated groundbreaking CGI on a level that hasn't been seen before. That in turn then lead to T2.

[@XxSanderMLGamerXx]

Honestly, 90s CGI has much more soul than modern CGI. I just like it better!

[@sikliztailbunch]

5:00 Henry Rollins!!! I totally forgot he´s in that movie :O

[@YourLocalZombie]

I forgot Henry Rollins was in Johnny Mnemonic.

[@jared338]

And Ithhe T, I'm therious.

[@williamdixon-gk2sk]

I believe you guys mean "Dr. Spider" and "J-Bone" are in Jonny Mnemonic. I've actually said before that it's worth watching just for those two characters.

[@killak2death]

So damn weird to see him in this movie after just seeing him in def jam fight for ny on ps2 😂😂 just odd and totally unexpected

[@citizenVader]

Dolph Lundgren is also forgotten

[@williamdixon-gk2sk]

@YourLocalZombie Man, Udo Kier, Dina Meyer, even Coyote Shivers, it is a pretty stacked cast all around.

[@geminijinxies7258]

The 90s tech is obviously dated but all these movies had very interesting ideas! The technical limitations forced them to be more creative with the script.

[@conscientiousobjector5988]

Jurassic Park is a visual masterpiece. Top of the line no matter the decade or century.

[@smallbluemachine]

Spaz Williams made the near impossible look within reach, when the truth was actually just incredible craftsmanship and artistry.

[@cyrollan]

eh, i'd rank 2001 and Fury Road higher. (if we're only talking visuals... not the amount of quality of CGI)

[@RIDDICK0911]

@@cyrollan Fury Road is stylized fantasy.

[@LSP2387]

Flight of the Navigator 1986 had some pretty advanced CGI for the time. I'm not saying it still totally holds up today, but definitely would stand out as much better than most CGI effects in the 80's.

[@emilywilhite5807]

Ooh I love The Thirteenth Floor. Rarely see it mentioned. I had forgotten it ended up in 2024. Guess I need to watch it before the end of the year.

[@thomasloney612]

Fun fact: most of the effects in Tron weren't CGI. They were cell shaded backgrounds and elements given a glow during film processing. The only actual CGI were the light cycles, the solar sail, Recognizers and tanks, Sark's ship, and the MCP, which amounted to 5 minutes or less. Oh, and Johnny Nemonic had a 32GB memory chip in his head. As ridiculous as that sounds, in Neuromancer (1984) the main character is wanted for stealing 8MB of RAM!

[@bartoscar]

Virtuosity is another oddity from this time. Not a lot of CGI - the plot revolves around a virtual amalgam of multiple serial killers (why?) who is somehow given physical form (again, great idea) and, as you would expect, goes on a crime spree. It's fun to watch Denzel take this film very seriously while Russell Crowe gives the most cartoonish over-the-top performance

[@Theomite]

YES!! I love that movie, bad as it is! I just don't feel like getting my ass kicked by Russell Crowe for bringing it up.

[@grimmpoetics313]

Damn. I used to love that movie. Thanks for the reminder

[@anthonylosego]

I always wondered why people stop short on their videos. You ask two great questions at the very end then just stop. You should explore those ideas.

[@cosmicphoto05]

In an ideal world, we'd get a proper "Johnny Mnemonic" remake still starring Keanu Reeves, but this time it's done right; a more faithful interpretation of William Gibson's story. Someone please make this happen!

[@RIDDICK0911]

Never gonna happen. Modern filmmaking industry is too clean, soft and sensitive for real cyberpunk.

[@Ham-om3nh]

Nice lil video analysis, im subbed bro

[@AdmiralBison]

90's CGI will probably make a comeback as a "retro and artistic style" choice. Be awesome some games will purposely make some CGI very 90's.

[@thegercast4794]

oh dear god, i hope not...

[@AdmiralBison]

@@thegercast4794 could be good if done well. If 70's and 80's themes can be done so can 90's.

[@thegercast4794]

@@AdmiralBison i guess. like if the movie took place inside some kind of computer or video game, or it was a scene where a character was hallucinating on something. which, to be fair, is the context for it in all of these older movies as well.

[@emilywilhite5807]

I’d be totally ok with that. But I’m the age that it would be nostalgic for me.

[@mandalina31]

Well, there's already games like Utrakill and Dusk which are pretty recent but use 90s video game graphics.

[@GoodnightwithGlomstad]

I stand by Mortal Kombat 1 when Sub-Zero turns the water into ice. I also standby Spawn's cape. I don't stand by Reptile. Banger of a theme though. Kinda makes up for it.

[@hold_the_dorks]

The reptile theme is insane!! Sub-zero's fight is sadly too shirt. Reptile's fight when in ninja form has such an amazing fighting choreography

[@GoodnightwithGlomstad]

@@hold_the_dorks Yeah I agree. Its almost like the lizard cgi was done by a separate company. Or just didnt know how to navigate that. T2 has insanely good CGI. MK had the budget. I just wonder who they chose?

[@bigleciezki]

The hell scenes in Spawn where insanely bad, even back when it came out.

[@GoodnightwithGlomstad]

@@bigleciezki Yeah I only defend the cape. Similar situation with MK.

[@diegolastra]

All the CGI budget in the Spawn movie went into the cape. The hell scenes looked like a Nintendo 64 game

[@MrSurguy-fb2hy]

The ‘Bullet Time’ shots in The Matrix were not computer generated though. They used an array of cameras against a green screen which were fired off in rapid succession to capture the camera tracking effect in ‘super slow motion’. The sequence of shots of the actors were blended together with CGI, but the shots were not created with 3D models like you see in most movies these days.

[@driesvanoosten4417]

The cgi is used for the background plates.

[@TheGuruStud]

@@driesvanoosten4417 Yep, everything in the subway is fake. It's very impressive.

[@RIDDICK0911]

@@driesvanoosten4417 it's not even cgi, they just comped the shots inside 360' photogrammetry. Same goes for a lot of scenes this guy shows during his "remember when cgi" montages. In most cases there's literally ZERO computer denerated imagery in them, just a lot of good ol' composite work.

[@Matthamatic]

I don't consider composite shots to be CGI, (even if a a computer is used). We we're doing compositing well before CGI was a thing. Escape from New York has CGI in it, but it's not the surfing scene. Right before he lands on the tower, there is a wire-frame representation of the top of the tower, and I'm pretty sure that's the only CGI in the movie.

[@Matthamatic]

Simulation theory does not really imply a higher intelligence is in control of the simulation. It does not even imply a higher level of technology. It could be a very basic simulation, but the people inside would not not know any better, as that is and always has been their entire universe, as far as they know.

[@kingcosworth2643]

I saw The Lawnmower Man at the theaters. It looked cool, but still clunky, nothing beat watching Jurassic Park for the first time though at the theatres. That first shot of the Sauropod is burnt in my mind it was the first time a thing that didn't exist actually looked 'real', like is was filmed.

[@emailchrismoll]

It is still holds up today, ultimately amazing movie making an amazing art Stihl initially comes from an amazing artist. Just because two people can sculpt things out of marble, doesn't mean one sculptor isn't far superior

[@thegercast4794]

did anyone have any of those old "mind's eye" vhs tapes? i had "the gate to the mind's eye" scored by thomas dolby. i watched the hell out of that as a kid in the 2000's.

[@emilywilhite5807]

Yes! I remember that!

[@emailchrismoll]

At the time they were the most mind-blowing graphics ever, style that had never been witnessed before. By today's standards they look cheesy

[@geminijinxies7258]

Yup! I still have the VHS of The Gate to the Mind's Eye somewhere. I bought it mostly because I was a fan of Thomas and CGI was cool at the time! It's funny cos the CGI of today don't interest me at all. The novelty is gone and it's used way too much.

[@biohzd31]

Yep!

[@warlockboyburns]

It was better when the limitations of the tech suited certain peoples artistic creativity.

[@russellfroggatt]

These films are some of my favourites, and JM, TLM and T13F would all be great for a reboot.

[@hobster07]

Loved the Lawnmower Man as a kid!

[@sentienceRemains]

seen every one of these movies. guess I’m officially old

[@ZylonBane]

What a lot of people weirdly ignore when criticizing Lawnmower Man's CGI is that it's literally _supposed to look like computer graphics._ It's never trying to depict anything real.

[@Lightblue2222]

the dated stuff often looks freakier "scarier" as its strange.

[@charlieg2262]

Great video, subscribed!

[@joedigioseffo7203]

You forgot the best CGI series ever Reboot

[@seandelaney8639]

3:57 yes, he has an interface installed. but I'm pretty sure that the actual information is stored in his own brain! remember he has had to (temporarily) remove memories to make room, such as of his childhood and parents

[@JinKee]

Ken Birdwell of Valve Software was all about "getting the lighting right." "The math that we were using was wrong," says Birdwell. "And not only that, the math that everybody was using was wrong. And then as I started to correct it I realised just how bad it was… and then I fixed it and suddenly everything looked great! "I had to go tell the hardware guys, the people who made hardware accelerators, that fundamentally the math was wrong on their cards. That took about two-and-a-half years. I could not convince the guys, finally we hired Gary McTaggart [from 3DFX] and Charlie Brown and those guys had enough pull and enough… I have a fine arts major, nobody's gonna listen to me."

[@cujoedaman]

CGI before the 2000's is what AI images/videos are now. It's uncanny, ridiculous, but still fun to see.

[@axebomber2108]

But these are lower budget examples of CGI. The 90s were also the decade of Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, Toy Story, Men in Black, Titanic, the Matrix, the Mask, Jumanji, and so on. It wasn’t all robotic movements, lack of texture and bulging eyeballs.

[@cujoedaman]

@@axebomber2108 Don't get me wrong, it's still a fun movie, I just got the 4K version. So much bad imagery in hi-def!

[@niccolomanahan7775]

Interesting cut from Rendezvous in Montreal to Rogue One. I actually felt a second of discomfort as soon as CG Princess Leia popped up, but I was fine with the low poly Bogart and Monroe. I guess they've been left behind by the uncanny valley already. I wonder if CG tech will improve to the point that people will regard today's CG faces as retro art instead of an attempt at realism.

[@crumblebee6728]

Take a look at deadpool and wolverine - the scene where she puts her hands in his head, he's entirely cg and you'd never know. We're beyond the point of being able to tell anymore - Rogue One was a while ago, it's dated already. We can create seamless digital people now, how obvious it is now is down to time and money restraints, not technology

[@niccolomanahan7775]

@@crumblebee6728 Yeah! Those hand shots in particular gave me the opposite creepy feeling from uncanny valley - it looked so real, I could imagine it happening to me hahaha. I definitely get that the tech has improved significantly since Rogue One. I'm just curious if Rogue One's CG Leia will eventually end up being a charming, easy-to-watch statement of its time, instead of (at least for me) something that's a little uncomfortable to watch.

[@crumblebee6728]

@@niccolomanahan7775I don't think it will - I think it's just going to age badly just like all the tech that was peak when it was first used (Indy, leia, the various recent deepfakes) tech moves so quick, I think until it's absolutely perfect, anything where a character speaks will be glaringly obvious and age very badly - digital doubles can be seamless now, but the second they speak the illusion is shattered

[@niccolomanahan7775]

@@crumblebee6728 Very good point. I think I've also made an unfair comparison between Rendezvous in Montreal - which is CG in a CG environment- and Rogue One's Leia - which is CG used to double for something real in a real-life context.

[@peterlenham3180]

​​​​@@crumblebee6728They spoke in the film Here, and it was utterly convincing. That's because its brand new deepfake technology from Metaphysics AI. The technology is here NOW.

[@memegazer]

I want to point out that you use CGI and vfx interchangably in your examples and I want to point out that bc cgi and vfx is so much more mature these days it often happens in scenes where the audience never even takes notice also want to point out that often when using "bad" examples of early cgi people tend to forget the context was a not too distant future for consumer graphics compared to the limitations of the time and in that context they were not that bad at all as a product of their time depicting a time that has also come and gone

[@joshuah9109]

When TRON came out in 1982, it was disqualified for the Best Visual Effects category because they considered using a computer "cheating."

[@bicyclelife7088]

Johnny Mnemonic is still one of my favorites along with Virtuosity. Both are highly underrated.

[@wikipediaintellectual7088]

True gem at the start

[@Waddlington]

i like your line regarding humans opening up to the possibilities of what technology can do/become through the use of cgi when it became actually useable to show something (impossible/sci/fi)

[@jplo5299]

Reminds me of my thesis in Uni days when I wrote about how computers are depicted in film in a rather in a dystopian fashion. I used 2001, Lawnmower man and Demon Seed as samples for this new kind of entertainment. I was more interested in CGi and the Siggraph festival with numerous CGI animated films. Back to reality, the thing was.. not many people back then realised how computers would become an important part of the way we do things and hence a mismatch of present and dystopian fantasy that were represented by the films we watched back then and even now.

[@RIDDICK0911]

We still ended up living in a technological dystopia, just not the cool kind.

[@GeorgeCoghill]

The Matrix could have easily turned out like Johnny Mnemonic or Lawnmower Man. They made the right choice, like Jurassic Park, of augmenting the environment instead of trying to recreate it completely. And just handled stylistically better overall.

[@IceColdKeiz]

Yeah but the story telling was amazing. I didn't care about the bad CGI because those movies were just too awesome.

[@seagull8415]

Young sherlock holmes, T2 and Jurassic park hold up after nearly 40 years. Way better than most marvel movies.

[@jans2887]

Are you sure you've seen t2 and JP? 1991 and 1993

[@KapiteinKrentebol]

OMG, was Henry Rollins in Johnny Mnemonic?

[@Dhakadice]

"Lawnmower Man" is one of those rare movies that deserve, nay, NEED a remake. (A sequel would work as well, but the leap in technology would be jarring when watching the movies back to back, unless they decided to remake all the CGI in the first one and re-release it as an "expanded edition" version or something to that effect)

[@mr.papaveraceae3009]

I personally love the 90s GCI aesthetic and earlier CGI in film and commercials.

[@stephenmontgomery5807]

Johnny , Lawnmower , 13th are some of my favorite movies

[@zimzam9166]

The internet in 2021 is so much better than what they thought it would be

[@RIDDICK0911]

The internet in 2006 was so much better than the shit you have today.

[@zimzam9166]

@RIDDICK0911 disagree and ur stutpid

[@bobberkins6058]

bob was here! :)

[@Defensive_Wounds]

9:45 - The first time I watched this film, I was at my mates place, they had seen it, the ending they rang their own phone at the exact same time and it freaked me the fark out!! Now THAT is immersion!! If you plan to watch this film with anyone who has not seen it, RING THEIR PHONE at this exact moment!!!!! 4:35 - If ONLY, the makers of that film has looked WAY farther into the future and picked an "impossible" size that is out of reach of us today in 2025 as regular plebs... One such as 320 thousand petabytes of storage. That'd do! Yes, 320GB was HUGE back then - hell, in 2006 when I bought my first 320GB HDD it was the biggest I could buy as an external HDD! Two years before than I had a 7GB HDD. in 2009 I bought 7x 1TB HDD's. I was way ahead of the curve! But still, today 7TB is not that much. Back in 2009 it was! But my question remains: who reading my comment here has 320000PB of storage right now? Google? Microsoft? Apple? Amazon? BYD?

[@TheRealRodent]

Rendezvous in Montreal looks better than anything Hollywood has made since 2010.

[@michaelparylak5649]

Wow! I remember when I was impressed with the concept of a chip as a photograph

[@huffdiggler]

You forgot The Explorers (1983)

[@emailchrismoll]

When I first saw that as a child, I was obsessed with it. The CGI blew my mind. Also in flight of the navigator the CGI was very groundbreaking.

[@keaneoRX7]

1:44 Young Sherlock Holmes was really something New when i first saw it !

[@CrawliestCotter]

Fun fact the Matrix shot here 0:44 was actually largely a practical effect. If I remember correctly only the bullets were CGI.

[@LordDeBahs]

i think they used like 150 camera shots around them , required good timing of shots . actors were on harnesesses obviously

[@uNkLeRaRa4]

Damn do I ever miss the 90's...

[@Chaggy1978]

Me too! I wish we could go back.

[@seandelaney8639]

1:33 "early three dimensional sequences in TRON" yeah, but what's shown here is not one of them

[@rizzo-films]

When I was a kid in the 90s i longed for the day that games would look like this CGI in real-time! I don't think we ever got there. The Xbox / PS2 era came close, but those consoles couldn't render enough polygons and reflection FX were not quite there yet. By Xbox 360 / PS3, the triangle counts were there but then shader fx had already surpassed early CGI with the introduction to physically based rendering, global illumination, ambient occlusion and superior animations. By Xbox one / PS4, games were already way beyond that except for Ray traced reflections, which has been around for decades in CGI. Now, I would hope that an indie developer would aim right for this style, but no one's really tried to replicate it. Anything close to that still looks pretty modern. I'm guessing it would look more dated than charming.

[@film79]

Is this just a way to call me old?

[@hanenkamm1979]

T-2 still holds up 33 years later… 33 Years!!!

[@surject]

Yeah, we're getting old - but not obsolete. T2 is a masterpiece.

[@TheTuttle99]

1:48 that knight looked amazing?!?

[@cmr2079]

I loved that Dire Strait's "Money for Nothing" music video. As far as the late 90's go, I felt like Lost in Space remake was the pinnacle of CGI. Unfortunately it didn't seem to really get better after that, just cheaper.

[@coolbluelights]

Flat earthers: "They faked the moon landing with CGI" Early CGI:

[@beaudanner]

It wasn't the rudimentary CG that ruined Johnny Mnemonic. It was just a bad movie.

[@voldem0rt]

As a product of 1982, I absolutely remember when cgi looked that awesome.

[@Wahinies]

Great expose

[@ryanr3071]

Independence Day and Jurassic Park were amazing for their time. Looked far better than most of the cgi used in the 90s

[@Theomite]

I don't know if it's the effects I miss or the time period where they came from. What I do know for sure is that I miss the spirit of invention they used to have. People were more interested in doing weird shit with CGI rather than using it to replace production design/values and cut costs.

[@zzygyy]

90s b movies rule. Thanks for the vid. Subbed

[@emilywilhite5807]

Agreed!

[@jcreedy20]

Very remeniscent of the kane face computer model from robocop 2

[@dieglhix]

modern movies are dead to me. When I pick up on what to invest 2 hours of my life on I go safe and look back at least 20 years

[@RENEG4DE4NGEL]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[@Z-FilesYT]

These days, some graphics are borderline if not cross the border of a singularity. I've seen gameplay cgi and cinematics, or AI generated overlays that straightout made it feel real. This in combination with chat bots for NPC characters where they can have endless conversations and act out patterns more complex and we will be there. VR headsets and body suits or neural link chips that can simulate feelings, from game to person and back and people might be able to be duped entirely.

[@RIDDICK0911]

A true distopia, finally realised!

[@zonesproductions]

Romulus really did Ian Holmes dirty. The cgi recreation was bloody awful.

[@RENEG4DE4NGEL]

Romulus did the entire Alien franchise dirty. Only cool scene was the station crashing into the ice rings.

[@zzygyy]

Hollywood always rebooting .

[@dogwklr]

They could have had anyone play a synthetic, there was nothing to say they all had the same face. Bizarre as it wasn't the same android from alien anyway.

[@chindleymuffin]

Ian Holm* not Holmes! He's not Sherlock....

[@christopherrapczynski204]

@@RENEG4DE4NGEL I totally agree, I am also one of the only people on earth that hates romulus. its completely shallow, I also hated spiderman no way home and everyone liked that too. I dont get how you can watch these soulless pandering reference movies and like them. if you get the source material, you should feel spoke down to, its slop for your nostalgia, and if you dont get the source material, why are you liking the stream of random content that is not cohesive to the actual movie? I do not get these kinds of movies at all. the only one that actually felt like it had something to say was deadpool and wolverine, since it was a meta look at forgotten and cancelled projects, and considering it was the end of a trilogy that disney bought from fox right before it was made, its a cool concept to make that aspect the actual central theme of the story.

[@Tanjutsu4420]

no it didnt look like that because nobody's screen was that clear to see those details

[@B4nan0n]

It’s looks way more sharper that UE5 games

[@charlieg2262]

Also, do you have a link to the music used in the video? I really like it but can't find the artist mentioned

[@m2y8v]

I remember, i still have nightmares to this day.

[@morbid1.]

I grew up watching "ReBoot" tv show and I thought it was very good CGI... Nostalgic feeling for the PSX era 3D graphics is still present

[@XXPYR0XX]

reboot was good tv show and the graphics inprove slightly each season it seems like. im really suprised the person who made this video said nothing about re boot you can watch a 4k ai upscale of pretty much the whole series for free here on youtube.

[@Nine-Signs]

I see people complaining about CGI from films ten years ago saying that the technology was not there to do what we can today, to which I reply that is complete bollocks as we have been able to render photo realistic sequences since the mid to late 90's and the only excuse for bad CGI in the last 20 years has been time and budget, today it is practically inexcusable yet still there are plenty of films with bad CGI due to producers and studio execs refusing to give the creatives that do the work sufficient time to do it right. p.s. How could you not mention the genesis planet in wrath of khan!! criminal! :p :D That sequence and the final planet is a masterpiece of CGI for the era.

[@andrewmlodzinski2639]

I dont know why but all my mushroom trip hallucinations look like late 80s cgi and I dont know why lmao

[@MammaApa]

Yeah same. Fractals and rotating 3D objects, I have often gotten reminded of the graphics in demos on the Commodore Amiga while tripping.

[@andrewmlodzinski2639]

@@MammaApa Is that because we are just reverting back to things we know and have seen before or our our brains just built Commodore architecture,

[@ProBreakers]

Today - in the future world of 2025 - I use the vast power of the internet and VR to play golf with my brother.

[@harrypothead42024]

CGI still looks like that

[@Luciphell]

It was better then than it is now. It was once used to enhance the real. Now it does it's best but usually fails to replace the real.

[@cportellamotiondesigner]

Cassiopeia is the fist movie CGI from brazil here

[@danieldemayo6209]

Ahh, when CGI was charming lol. Virtuosity was a good one too!

[@Nine-Signs]

"what if VR technology can be used to save us" ah if only, unfortunately cyberspace is dependant on the real word infrastructure and that is dependant on humanity having a viable future in perpetuity. Something that is not presently possible under a global economic system that demands a perpetual 3% global GDP growth rate to stave off its collapse which is in complete defiance of the immutable laws of physics governing a finite world. Unless we change that system all technology will ever be able to do is prolong our suffering and decline, until it too is overcome by the ramifications of what we have done to our finite enclosed earth. Bleak I know, but also mathematically proven. The Matrix has many truths of our times built in to it. One of which is the fact that you are living at the peak of human civilisation, and it is a long way down from here. Excellent video friend, I enjoyed it very much.

[@rck-lp7389]

The first time that I have seen the lawnmower man I was tripping balls on acid and the effects where something else folks

[@FatNorthernBigot]

What I learnt from this video... Henry Rollins can't act. 😂 (Great video, also. Thank you)