Do graphics really look better than ~10 years ago? A closer look

 So....I decided to take a closer look at some game series' I enjoy. I won't post videos for all of these, that took a lot of time, and you can look it up yourself, but I decided to do an experiment. Open up two games from the same series in split screen and figure out what I think looks better. I decided to focus onfour series that had had recent game releases, and have older games with similar looking content. With that said, let's begin.

Battlefield

First, I took the video of Battlefield 1 (2016) and compared it to Battlefield 6 (2025) from yesterday's article. Looking at them side by side, BF6 does look better. Environments are more detailed, there was more destruction. The lighting looked gorgeous in BF6. Now...was this worth say, a decade worth of improvements? Eh...in a linear fashion? No. I then went back and looked at BF2142 (2006) and it looks like...hot garbage compared to BF1. With THAT, that was a solid 10 years of improvement. But BF1 vs BF6 was more gradual. 

I also looked at BF5 (2018) vs BF6 (2026) since BF5 was always my benchmark for "best looking game". First I ended up looking at a totally different map and I was like, ya know what, BF5 has a different art style with this more rural map. Let's compare city maps. 

So I went with Amiens from BF1 vs BF6, and it panned out. yeah, BF6 does look significantly better. I also compared Rotterdam from BF5 to BF6 and while the difference was closer, BF6 still had better lighting, more detail, and better destruction. 

Still, to think it took 7 years to fully and unequivocally beat BF5 is just wow. I didnt even bother with 2042 as I know that one looked like crap in practice. It always looked and felt janky, and its art style was part of the problem too. It kinda felt like a BF4 style regression coming off of BF3. Still, even then BF4 did have more detail, it looked worse in practice though due to the art style though. 

But yeah. So...are graphics getting better? Yes. They are. But the differences are a lot more subtle and I literally need to look side by side to notice the difference.

Call of Duty (Black Ops)

 So...I focused exclusively on black ops here as these are the newest, and because COD has much differing art styles. More specifically, I focused on futuristic games given BO7 is a futuristic game. 

BO3 (2015) vs BO7 (2025)- Oh my god there's a world of difference. To be fair, COD was never a "looker" of a franchise for most of its existence, and the graphics are typically unremarkable and mid for the time, but yeah, BO7 looked quite sharp, with detailed environments, and decent lighting. I guess it just looks mid to me because I hate upscaling and because BF6 looks so much better. But that's a problem COD always had vs battlefield. DICE makes gorgeous games. The COD devs make mediocre looking ones. But yeah, BO3 looks quite dated these days. Even on a similar map.

For BO4 (2018) vs BO7 (2025), the difference was a bit closer in practice. Here, BO7 DID look better, but BO4 didn't look bad. It looked significantly better than BO3 in just a few years time. Of course, after BF1 kicked IW's butt so bad it spawned this hilarious song, Activision and Treyarch actually had to TRY to make something that didnt suck. And BO4 was the beginning of the modernization of the series. So it was one of the first CODs in years that didn't outright suck. It was quickly surpassed by MW19, but yeah I feel like that 3 year jump between BO3 and BO4 was as significant as the jump between BO4 and BO7. 

So again, games ARE getting better, but the differences are, generally speaking, more subtle and gradual in the 2020s than they were in the 2000s or 2010s. 

Actually...just a thought experiment. I was gonna do BO4 vs BO cold war, but just came across the same map from BO1 vs BO4, so let's compare that too.

BO1 (2010) vs BO4 (2018)- While BO4 is better looking, BO1 holds up well. heck, BO1 holds up so well it looks better than BO3 to me. So BO3 was just trash. Janky mid 2010s CODs. No wonder they never held up. But yeah, I'd say that BO1 vs BO4 is about as big of a jump as BO4 vs BO7. Dont get me wrong, the newer ones are better, but again, it seems like if you actually had decent art direction, even 2010 era games can still look decent today.  We'll actually see this trend in the other 2 series I mention.

Doom

 Doom 2016 vs Doom the Dark Ages (2025)- Doom the dark ages does look a bit better, a bit more detailed, but DANG doom 2016 holds up. It's not a huge difference at all. Now, if you put these side by side and said this was almost a decade of difference, I'd be really? like, that's what I'd expect from eternal. Speaking of eternal.

Doom eternal (2020) vs 2016 vs dark ages (2025)- Here, the whole art direction rears its ugly head. Something about eternal just looks off. I kinda always felt this way, but I never really articulated it until putting them side by side. Eternal feels more cartoony. The environments are bright and vibrant which doesnt fit the doom aesthetic at all, and comparing 2016's kadingir sanctum to super gore nest, yeah, 2016 had a MUCH MUCH MUCH better are direction. 2020 was more detailed in some ways but it kinda had that "black ops 3" vibe if you know what I mean, to compare it to the BO series above. The lighting was flat, the art style was just bad. Sometimes art style trumps graphics. This is true here and this is true in COD. 

Would I say that dark ages brings a decade of improvements over 2016? Not really. And if you go back the other way, overshooting the decade by a bit and comparing to Doom 3 (2004), yeah 2016 is much better. Doom 3 does hold up, but comparing that to a more modern game? Yeah I've played enough doom 3 to know its differences are more glaring in person. And of course, Doom 3 (2004) is better than Doom and Doom 2 (1993/1994) by a nearly infinite amount in terms of raw graphics. Like even if Doom and Doom 2 aged reasonably well all things considered given the art style is somewhat timeless, you can't compare a 90s game with an, at the time, ultra realistic looking 2000s game.

All in all, comparing 2016 to dark ages (9 years) vs 2016 to doom 3 (12 years), honestly, the difference is MUCH greater between 2016 and Doom 3. Like, it's not even close. ANd that isnt due to the extra 3 years of time and graphical advancements either. Once again, we're kinda just scraping the bottom of the barrel here in improving things. 2016 already looked so good it was hard to improve on that and 9 years of changes are relatively subtle and marginal. 

The Outer Worlds

 So...this one actually REALLY surprised me. But...I'm gonna say it, comparing the two green starting planets, TOW1 (2018) looks WAY better than TOW2 (2025). it looks more detailed, it looks sharper. TOW2 looks super muddy. it often lacks detail. It feels like it was just thrown together. I mean, neither TOW game is a masterpiece all things considered. Think of them like really really mid space fallout games with a decent story. But idk, I feel like, they tried more with TOW1. TOW2 feels rather lazy in comparison. Like, a lot of detail is super muddy. It doesnt look sharp at all. And this has been my experience with TOW2 too. It just looks...kinda mid. I mean, it's okay, but seeing TOW1 in motion again along side it, it's like, my god what were these devs doing? Like, to be fair, I didnt particularly like TOW2 in general. I did go back recently and finished up my run and did side quests and stuff, and the game just felt so fricking empty. Like I literally had trouble getting invested in it. Mid AF RPG.

I guess TOW2 is the epitome of what I consider to be "modern gaming." Like, it actually IS worse than previous games from years ago. Like, it's the epitome of slop. I won't say dont buy it, but dont pay the $50 i did. It's not worth it. Maybe $20-35. 

Conclusion

So what can we conclude?

Well, I can definitely say this. If you made a beautiful game from the mid 2000s onward with good art direction, it still holds up today. Sure, it's been surpassed, BO1 and Doom 3 look kinda mid compared to newer games from the same series, but they don't look BAD. At the same time, bad art direction can make games look WORSE than previous ones. See Black Ops 3, Doom Eternal, Battlefield 2042, and the Outer Worlds 2. A well crafted game will still hold up 15-20 years later graphically. A poorly designed one thrown together will look bad forever. It'll look dated at launch with people wondering, wtf is wrong with this? Literally looks worse than the last one.

Even then, with eternal at least, it didn't look bad in practice, I played through it, several times. It does look worse than 2016 but it looks pretty good. I'll maintain my stance on the others though.

Finally, do games look better than they did 10 years ago? Yes...but the differences are relatively subtle, and I would literally need to compare them side by side to notice. And even more so, there is some level of difference in practice. I just watched games on YT videos just now. I can tell you, playing them on your own computer, your mileage my vary. A game that looks better than the previous one in marginal subtle ways may look absolutely terrible on low graphics settings with upscalers on. I know BF4 looked significantly worse than BF3 at the time because of that. It might be part of my problem with 2042 although I'll maintain even after upgrading my system that game looks mid, part of it is just art style and general direction. And eternal, yeah, running on low...with upscaling on....yeah...no. I hate that. Same with BO7. Like, that's a "modern gaming" thing. If you buy a $250 GPU today, you're gonna get like low-medium settings with upscaling on half the time. And it just looks atrocious given those subtlely worse 10 year old titles can run on the same rig at max and look beautiful. 

And you gotta keep that in consideration too. Sometimes the cost of progress isn't worth it. Like, Doom the Dark Ages is NOT worth a decade worth of graphical advancements for me. Even at its best, looking at both games on max graphics side by side, the differences between 2016 and dark ages are relatively subtle these days. And I can tell you, when BO7 was trying to make me run it with upscaling on, i was watching the act man play COD4 from 2007 in the other window and i honestly thought THAT looked better despite the obvious lack of detail. Seriously, I like sharp, detailed games. I HATE upscaling with a passion. If I gotta upscale the game, it's like taking my glasses off. It doesn't matter if everything is blurry. That's a problem I actually have in BF6 too sometimes. Like as good as that looks in motion, I can tell you, when you ZOOM IN and youre trying to pick off an enemy with a 4x scope, the models that game shows look blurry AF and it can be hard to see what youre shooting at. I feel like a lot of older shooters never had that problem. You just had less detailed models, but the models looked SHARP for what they were.

Blur is never the solution guys, I'd literally rather have less detail than blur. And I guess that's one of the reasons I hate modern gaming as much as I do. Everything is upscaling, and unless I paid a full $100 more for my GPU for super special DLSS upscaling, the solutions available to me look like garbage. And no, I shouldnt have to rely on upscaling in the first place. And i really dont know how good DLSS is. I mean, I've watched comparison videos on that, and generally prefer native. Unless its TAA, which is atrocious, at which point there isnt a good solution unless fidelityFX CAS is available.

Which is ironically. I'd rather take AMD's ancient pre FSR solution to sharpening/upscaling over their newer stuff. But I stand by that. 

With that said, yeah, graphics are better now, but the differences are far more subtle than they used to be, and honestly, in practice, blur ruins any positive improvements IMO.  Seriously, if youre a developer relying on upscaling to make our stuff work, it's 1 step forward for 2 steps back, which is why im so mixed on graphics in the 2020s. It's like...yeah all of these subtle differences arent worth it if it looks blurry AF. 

But I will admit, yes, there are SOME differences between mid/late 2010s games in most cases and mid 2020s games. Nothing like past decades, nothing is a world of difference, but there is a difference.  

Discussing the history of 3D graphics (and why graphical advancement doesn't matter as much these days)

 So...I decided I wanted to go into this, since as we discussed, back in the day, the transition into 3D gaming with gen 5 was pretty mind blowing. 3D games existed before that. Heck, when looking it up, they kinda expand back to the 1970s. I'm mostly gonna start my focus on the 1990s since that's what I'm aware of, and because that's when 3D went mainstream though. Because keep in mind, even if 3D games existed in the 70s and 80s, they weren't the norm, and most games were rather 2D. I mean, when I got into video games, the big debate was sega vs nintendo, and sonic vs mario. Sega did what nintendidn't with 16 bit blast processing, but then even the super nintendo console had 3D games like star fox, Mariokart, and doom. My own introduction to 3D games came from Doom on the 32x. And yeah, it was pretty mind blowing at the time. With that said, my original start of the 3D genre was gonna focus on 1992 with wolfenstein 3D, as that was doom's direct precursor. So let's start there:

1992

Wolfenstein 3D

Yeah, this kinda looked like that old windows 95 screen saver many of us were obsessed with back in the day. Pretty primitive, but it worked. 

Super Mario Kart

 Posted this above, but this is what games looked like back then. Very primitive, but yeah, kinda interesting. Gotta start somewhere, ya know?

1993

 Doom

 This video looks like it was done with a more modern engine, but yeah, doom was pretty primitive too, but it looked leagues above wolfenstein. Back in the 1990s, tech advanced so fast that a game that looked mind blowing one year looked dated the next. Doom basically obsoleted wolfenstein pretty quickly to the point of it becoming a relative footnote.

Star fox

 Posted this above too, but this is what SNES games looked like in 3D. Nowhere near as good. But again, gotta start somewhere.

1994

Doom II 

Yeah 1994 brought doom II, which was more doom. It worked, but it wasn't a huge graphical enhancement, even if it did expand the sandbox by quite a bit. 

1995

Hexen 

ID software was cooking in the 1990s and in 1995, they brought hexen, which was like doom but more medeval. FUn fact, doom was supposed to be more medieval but a lot of that was cut for the more science fiction theme. We did see doom the dark ages lately 30 years later, but yeah. 

For the most part, games were still 2D during this era. I got my first exposure to doom through the 32x around this time though. 

1996

1996 was the more breakthrough year for 3D to the masses. Again, while PC gaming had stuff like wolfenstein, doom, etc, most gamers were playing mario and sonic during this time on their genesis and SNES. but 1996 marked the transition to gen 5. And yeah, it was mind blowing.

Quake 

 On PC, advancement continued with the release of quake, another medieval style FPS from ID. it kinda bridged the gap between heretic/hexen and doom, although future quake entries had significantly more sci fi settings. 

But yeah, consoles got a huge boost too through the N64 and the PS1.

Super Mario 64

Crash Bandicoot

Obviously, the graphics on the console released trailed quake, but they still arguably beat doom. So it was pretty impressive. Again, keep in mind, like 99% of games most of us played before this point were 2D. Mario went from this to what you see above. Mind blowing. 

1997

 Quake 2

 ID still had it. And I wanna remind you, we're now at the 5 year mark from Wolfenstein 3D. All the change we've seen happened over FIVE YEARS. That's like comparing a 2021 to 2026 game today. Meanwhile we still treat cyberpunk 2077 which is now 6 years old as some sort of holy grail of graphics. Yeah...

 The N64 came out swinging with a lot of good games during this time frame too. Consider the following:

Star Fox 64

And note how blurry it is, I mean, we discussed this the other day, but most N64 games were 240p at the time. Most footage I'm showing has been upscaled significantly from what it looked like back in the day to most. Of course it didnt look that bad on CRTs intended to run at 480p and were able to blur things well enough where it didnt bother us much.

 Mario kart 64

Doom 64

Doom 64 was the REAL doom 3 before we had Doom 3. Or Doom 2.5. But yeah. Again, go back and compare this to Doom 1&2. Again, only a 4 year difference...

 Goldeneye

 So yeah, N64 was cooking. Again, those games never kept up with PC at the time, but it did bring 3D to the mainstream for a lot of us console peasants back in the day. 

1998

And while the N64 and PS1 would plod along for a few more years, we were already breaking boundaries and surpassing that. On PC, we had this:

Half Life

Yeah, this was EVENTUALLY released on the PS2 for us on console. But they had this kinda stuff on PC back in 1998. Again, this is a mere 6 years after Wolfenstein and 5 years after doom, and we were already starting to see the beginnings of gen 6 style graphics. Mind blowing.

And consoles werent doing bad either. Remember the sega dreamcast? Released in 1998 in Japan.  

Sonic Adventure

Keep in mind, just FOUR YEARS BEFORE THIS, we were playing this on our genesises. Again, the 90s were a magical time where graphical advancement was mindblowing. Jensen Huang things ray tracing can do that nowadays, but no...just no. 

1999

 Meanwhile let's look at what PC was cooking up.

Unreal Tournament

Quake III Arena

 Yeah this is where we got into the era of the first true multiplayer games and arena FPS. Q3 and UT99 were the two big ones. And again, this was gen 6 graphics back then. On the low end side of gen 6 for sure, but still. 

2000

Deus Ex 

2000 actually feels like somewhat of a lull. A calm before the storm. Still, the PS2 launched around this time, bringing those nice graphics PC has had since 1998 to consoles finally. A few games from the time:

29 game compilation

2001

This is where gen 6 REALLY took off and we got the game cube and Xbox. A few games from the time:

Halo Combat Evolved

Again, note that console games were 480p at the time so were still rather blurry. And note how badly it looks compared to some other upscaled footage. This is why I crap on DLSS in the modern era. 

More upscaled footage (PC)

Same game, but yeah. Again, devs: we don't want to look at blurry crap. We dont care how good the game looks, if it's blurry, it looks like garbage.

Anyway, another one I wanna include is this:

 007 Agent Under Fire

This was my first PS2 game, and MAN coming just 4 years after goldeneye, yeah it's mindblowing in retrospect. We got THAT much advancement that fast. We're not even at the 10 year mark from wolfenstein 3D. We're at the 5 year mark from super mario 64.

 Meanwhile PC had this:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

It was a huge jump from Wolfenstein 3D, but honestly, it just felt like more quake 3 to me at the time. 

2002

Battlefield 1942 

Yep, we finally got battlefield, which was pretty insane at the time. Looked amazing too.  

There wasn't a ton ton of advancement through gen 6 on console. But 2002 still had a decent selection of games come out. 

 007 Nightfire

 Super Mario Sunshine

Medal of Honor Frontline

 Yeah, we got a lot of WWII games back in the early 2000s. It was kind of a thing back then...

 2003

Unreal Tournament 2003 

2003 also didn't massively advance graphics a ton. Still, we did see next gen releases of previous gen IP that looked quite good

Legend of Zelda Winwaker

F Zero GX

Mario Kart Double Dash

2004

 Half Life 2

 Doom 3

 Honestly, 2004 is where gen 7 officially started for PC gamers. Sure, console gamers would be stuck at that same 2000sish standard of visuals for another year or two, but yeah things were already advancing on the PC side of things with mindblowing graphics. This is why I always mark the era of "modern gaming" around 2004ish. After a decent period of relative stagnation, yeah, things really advanced here. As far as doom 3 goes, this is a full 11 years after Doom 1. So....yeah. Note how far we came in just a decade. I'd honestly say these 2004 games look closer to modern games 20 years later than games from 10 years prior to this point. 

2005

F.E.A.R.

Quake 4

Call of Duty 2

2005 was really cooking graphically. The 360 launched around this time so some of these games came immediately, and some the next year. But yeah. 2004 walked so 2005 can run. Games around this time started feeling like movies. I'd say this is around where we started hitting diminishing returns with graphics on the whole. 

2006

Gears of War

Prey (2006)

We seemed to hit a plateau around this time visual wise for most games. And honestly, things didn't start improving as a whole until around 2010-2011ish. Still, there was that ONE game that set the bar for visuals...

 2007

 Crysis

 Yeah, this was MINDBLOWING at the time. And it was totally the great PC killer game at the time too. One of the last of its kind. There's a reason the meme used to be "but can it run crysis?" Yeah. I mean, I admit, at this point it does look a bit dated, but it's almost 20 years old, what do you want? Point is, these kinds of games look closer to the modern day than say, the 1990s games from 10-15 years ago. heck, Crysis was just miles above even like half life 2 and doom 3. And keep in mind, Halo combat evolved was just 6 years before this.

Anyway, 2007 was also a banging year for video games in general. Just a few other games that showcase pretty decent visuals from the era.

Unreal Tournament 3

 Halo 3

 Call of Duty 4

 2008

 After 2007, 2008 was a pretty mid year for gaming. Nothing really came close to crysis for another 4 years or so, and the 2007 games above were generally what games at the time looked like through 2012-2013 for the most part. 

 Far Cry 2

 Fallout 3

 Haze

 Yes yes, I know Fallout 3 isnt that good graphically, but it had SCALE like I had never played before at the time while still looking relatively decent. So it deserved an honorable mention. 

2009

 Killzone 2

 FEAR 2

Again, after Crysis, things stagnated, it took YEARS to look better, and we mostly just got more of those 2005-2006 era visuals again and again. To be fair, after they hit that point, I can see where going further took time. At that point, we started seeing clearly diminishing returns. 

2010

Battlefield Bad Company 2

 Metro 2033

Yeah we didn't QUITE hit Crysis 1 visuals, but this is where we started getting close. This is where, just like in 2004 we started seeing the first "gen 7" type games on PC, we started going that way around 2010 on consoles. Most console games were stuck at 2006 era visuals still, but we did start seeing graphics make a jump again. 

2011

 Crysis 2

Battlefield 3

 Yeah this is where I'd say we finally matched/beat Crysis 1. Crysis 2 offered insane visuals, although some would argue Crysis 1 was better, due to Crysis 2 primarily taking place in NYC and urban environments being less impressive than the jungle. Kinda close though. Battlefield 3 also once again set the standard for quite insane visuals. Once again, it would take years for games to fully surpass this level of graphics IMO, even with next gen games coming soon. 

Also, keep in mind, we're about equidistant from 2011 as 2011 is from 1996. Just go back and look at quake and super mario 64 again and compare it to this. YEAH. Again, this is the level at which games used to advance graphically. We dont see anything like this in the modern era IMO. Crysis 2 is closer to, say cyberpunk, than it is to, say, 2002 games.  

2012

Far Cry 3 

After 2011, 2012 was rather uneventful graphically. It was kind of a regression. Far Cry 3 looked pretty solid, but still kind of fell short of even Crysis 1. 

Planetside 2

I included planetside 2 for scale but it was never really a looker. BF3 and even BC2 looked better, but imagine having up to 2000 players fighting on a map the size of like skyrim, it was mindblowing at the time. And it did crush our PCs as well. 

2013

 Crysis 3

 Crysis 3 was, like all Crysis games at the time, rather mindblowing. It beat PS4/Xbox one era graphics AT LAUNCH. 

In comparison I didn't find many PS4/Xbox one style games super impressive at the time. BF4, for example, felt like a regression from BF3 graphically in some ways.  

 Battlefield 4

GTA V

GTA 5 was actually a PS3/360 game. I know it was very quickly remastered and brought to next gen consoles and PC, but it was originally created for last gen hardware.

It was the year where "Crysis" style visuals went mainstream, but yeah. As you can tell, we've had that on PC for quite a while at this point. It's just that most games were stuck in the mid 2000s because of the hardware.

2014

Metro Last Light 

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Far Cry 4

Titanfall 

Once again, we finally got that crysis 1 style visuals being pretty standard at the time. Actually better because the textures on new games could be pretty insane with 2 GB cards being standard and games using up to 4 GB on high end cards. 

2015

 Star Wars Battlefront

 EA did it again, bringing amazing graphics at the time to home consoles. I mean, it looks A LITTLE dated now. But keep in mind, 2026 is just as far away as the original Star Wars Battlefront II was back in 2004. 

 Have graphics advanced THAT much in the past 11 years? Not really. 

 Witcher 3

Fallout 4

 And a lot of peopel gave Fallout 4 crap for graphics but I thought it looked pretty good. And comparing it to fallout 3, yeah, a huge quantum leap in just 5-7 years. 

2016

 Doom 2016

 This is where gen 8 REALLY got going with insane titles like Doom 2016 as well as stuff like Battlefield 1. Again, it goes to show it was still possible to push boundaries. 

 Battlefield 1

 Once again, amazing. Still looks amazing today. Comparing this to like 2005-2006 titles, yeah, we still advanced in 10 years. Maybe not as much as the previous 10, but yeah. 

2017

 Star Wars Battlefront II

 While kind of a mid game, no one can deny that the star wars battlefront EA games looked fricking beautiful. And honestly, the graphics still largely hold up to this day in my view. 

 Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

2018

 Battlefield 5

 I still think this is one of the best games ever made in terms of sheer graphics and visuals. 

 Red Dead Redemption 2

 Not my thing but a lot of people loved the detail of Red Dead Redemption 2. 

 Far Cry 5

 Far Cry 5 also looked pretty good.

Atomic Heart 

 Atomic Heart also released in 2018. I played the demo of this one but never bought the full game. I still might in the future, but it does look amazing for its time as well.

 As we can kinda tell visuals for gen 8 kinda leveled off after 2015-2016 or so though. Id say the only one of those that looked significantly better was BF5 and even then....compared to BF1 and battlefront 2? It was better, but not worlds better. Still, BF5 has been my "this is the best looking game ever" game for a while even after 2018.

2019

 Metro Exodus

 Metro exodus also looked pretty mind blowing at the time. Once again, I kinda feel like since 2016 it's kind of just diminishing returns. 

 2020

 Cyberpunk 2077

 It's kinda sad but 6 years later, this is still considered the best game ever made graphically. It's the one game that made ray tracing really stand out, but it's one of the only ones to have done so IMO, and it still looks beautiful even without ray tracing.

 Doom Eternal

 Does eternal look that much better than 2016? A bit, but not mindblowingly so. Either way cyberpunk clearly won this year. 

 2021

 Most games after 2020 never matched cyberpunk's visuals. Halo infinite is probably the best from that year in my view. 

Halo infinite

Battlefield 2042

 BF2042 was like a downgrade from BF5. BUT...it still looks better than bad company 2 and BF3 arguably (the map in the video is a BC2 map). 

This game popped up when I looked for the best looking games. Never played it but it looks nice.

Bright memory infinite

2022

 Callisto protocol

 Kind of a mid game but popped up as one of the best looking ones. i got this free with my current GPU. I found it rather mid though. Looked great though. 

 2023

Alan Wake 2 

 Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Starfield 

Alan wake 2 looks pretty impressive. Frontiers of pandora looks okay. Not too amazing.   Starfield looks okay.

 2024

Black Myth Wukong

So this is the ONE game from 2024 of the ones recommended that I really felt stood out. I never played the full game but did mess with the benchmark a while back. It was pretty impressive. 

Still, for the most part other games look kinda mid.

 Star Wars Outlaws

 Looks only a bit better than Battlefront II.

 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

 Visuals remind me of metro exodus or battlefield 5

 I mean, thats the thing. We started getting these kinds of visuals late last gen. You could argue these newer ones look a little better, but still, outside of wukong I dont think any of them are a decent leap from the likes of say, BF5, or Cyberpunk. Most games kinda plateaued in my view.

 2025

 Doom the Dark Ages

 Right now doom the dark ages is considered the best looking game out there. It does look great at max settings, but keep in mind this requires beefy hardware to pull off. On like a RX 6650 XT im running on low, with FSR on, and using sharpening to compensate. It looks good even on that, but is it really that appreciable of a boost over 2016 or eternal? Arguably not really. There IS improvement, dont get me wrong. But we're also seeing the costs required to get it. The price of hardware to pull off improved visuals is going up, while GPUs have barely advanced per dollar for the past 3 years by this point. 

Battlefield 6 

Does look impressive, but I can tell you in practice this game has significant issues with blur at long range that makes spotting enemies hard. Looks great at a cursory glance but in practice some aspects of the visuals are just...bleh.

 Anyway I wont do 2026 since the whole year hasnt happened yet and the best examples (resident evil reqiuem and crimson desert REALLY don't look that good in practice. 

Conclusion

With that said, what can I conclude? 

Well, to some degree I advise people to look for themselves, but as I see it:

1990s- regular, rapid improvements.

2000s- slower but significant improvements that happened in bursts. The mid 2000s from 2004-2006 were the most mindblowing. 2010-2011 saw the next jump but that was the 2010s.

2010s- Once again, graphics seemed to improve in a five year cadence. 2010-2011 were amazing, but we didnt see another jump like it until around 2016. And then Cyberpunk in 2020 was a pretty huge jump that still holds up today.

2020s- To be fair I focused on the games that were allegedly the best on the market. And they do look good, but very few of them are truly mind blowing to me. Many of them look about as good as late 2010s titles to me, and I feel like we've reached a level of stagnation here. 

A lot of games use FSR or DLSS on more modest hardware that makes the visuals worse. As I said, I dont care how good Doom the dark ages looks if it's blurry AF. We saw this even with old games. Like, a lot of those games look way better than they did at the time because again, 240-480p in practice. 

 And even then, I would advise people. Look at say, a mid 90s game and compare it with a mid 2000s one. NIGHT AND DAY difference. Compare a mid 2000s one with a mid 2010s one. Also a pretty big difference. Not AS big but big.

Compare say, BF1 in 2016 to BF6 in 2025 and....not gonna lie, I actually think BF1 looks better in practice. Maybe the visuals of BF6 are technically better, but again, I dont feel like things meaningfully advanced a ton since then. The same can be said of doom 2016 vs doom the dark ages. I actually kinda like 2016 in practice better, not gonna lie. I know the newer one is supposed to be better, but it's not worlds better.

 On the other hand, compare GTA V to cyberpunk and its a pretty big difference. Still, despite 7 years we're talking 2 generations of console differences there, a late gen 7 vs an early gen 9 game. 

if hard pressed, yes, 2020s games at the high end of the spectrum do look better. I just understand that for the most part, those games 1) are few and far between with the average game having more late gen 8 era visuals, and 2) require supercomputers to properly run with all the eye candy on. Consoles tend to get a stripped down experience, and my own PC probably gets roughly base PS5 tier visuals. So...idk. 

Here's the thing, to make the kinds of advancements we've seen over time work, each console typically is 6-10x more powerful than the previous gen. It used to be possible to generate that level of performance uplift in the past. Nowadays, things have stagnated. 2020 era hardware has gone UP in price and is still rather mainstream. The same 3060 and 6600 tier cards that were common back then are still go tos now, with now the 5060 and 9060 xt being favorites. Even then, they're quickly going up into the whole $300-400 zone, or $400+ for 16 GB RAM. So again, things are stalling out. 

I admit, even at the time, a lot of these games didnt feel worth it either. If you played say, fear on low it looked last gen. So did quake 4, etc. And sometimes you didnt get to properly max the games out for years after. But idk, I felt like the visual impacts were a lot heavier back in the day, and a lot more noticeable. Nowadays, it literally takes me around 5 years to notice a game looks dated. And again, given im not particularly playing the best of the game games listed for the most part, games from 7-10 years ago still look beautiful to me. Like I can play those 2016-2019 era games and still consider them relatively modern. It really comes down to me not particularly playing the most CGI looking 2020s games that much. And trust me, outside of those selected few games, most look...rather mid and more like late gen 8 games to me. 

So are graphics still advancing even in the 2020s? yes. Are they advancing as fast as they used to? No. Are the advancements particularly accessible to average gamers? Not particularly given 3060/4060/6600/7600 tier hardware is about average and most games dont push things that much. And yeah. This is why I'd rather developers focus less on raw graphics and more on performance and accessibility. Even smartphones can pull off 2005-2010 era graphics decently now. The top end ones are probably closer to around 2010-2015 era graphics. The steam deck and switch 2 are around PS4/PS4 pro level respectively. Consoles have kind of plateaued, and pushing next gen ones next year isnt likely to net anything close to a 8x power increase. CPU wise might do a 2-3x increase AT BEST, probably closer to 1.5-2x given the power envelope. And I think PS6 specs leaked out are 2x PS5 specs. Things arent advancing like they used to.

This isn't to say there isnt room to improve. Modern games still look quite good even compared to stuff from 10 years ago on the average (keep in mind I cherrypicked the BEST 2016 games, the average ones were a bit more modest, probably closer to 2013 era visuals, whereas average games today are closer to like 2018-2019 era visuals). But yeah, the ceiling isnt as high.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that to give my perspective of why I aint super impressed with modern games. I didnt even touch game play but game play wise a lot of them are pretty mid. Visually, things are improving, but not as far as they used to. I'd say we're likely not gonna see something greatly beat cyberpunk until 2030ish. kinda sad how a 6 year old game is still considered the most impressive, by now even crysis's graphics were pretty mainstream by 2013.  

So where do we stand on the house?

 So, I'm gonna formally suspend my house model for now, given constant gerrymandering radically changing the congressional map. I don't think my existing model can hold up well and it was a bit...unwieldy anyway. It had 60 swing districts, and at this point many of them are probably more solid while many new ones are swing, and it's too hard to keep up with right now. I'll reinstate a version of it down the line when things settle, and maybe we will finally start seeing real POLLING DATA, but yeah. I don't think that model is gonna hold up under the stress of constant redistricting as it basically relies on "take 2024, shift however many points to the left/right as the generic congressional vote is at." That can't work well if we're not even dealing with the same districts with the same voters. And that's not even including what chatGPT pointed out recently where shifts on district levels may not be uniform, and yeah. 

So what I'm gonna do here is just go by the cook PVI.

 So...we got 185 Solid D districts, versus 187 Solid R. That was the basis for my original model. I counted everything that wasnt solid and had 60 districts or so. From there, we have 11 likely Ds, and 17 likely Rs, giving us a total of 196 D districts and 204 R districts. This is distinctively weaker for dems than we had before. These districts are unlikely to flip and can serve as baseline. 

 From there, we have 12 lean D, and 5 lean R. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Given this is gonna be a heavy D environment in 2026, with the generic congressional vote up 5.6%, which represents a roughly 8 point shift from 2024, I would expect most if not all of those lean Ds to be relatively safe. As far as the lean Rs, well, my model has 3 of them registered in it, with 2 of them leaning D and 1 leaning R in my experience. Idk of the other two, those are new. That's what I said my model is a bit outdated. But we can theoretically snipe at least 2 of those seats away from the republicans and looking at the other 2, they already have D's in them and I would expect any existing D to retain their seat. So we might be able to win 4 of them. And if we get the 12 lean D, given the D favored environment, we're up to 212D to 205R. 

From there, it's the tossups. My model has most of them, and it has virtually all of them going republican. It only doesnt include one currently, FL25, and that went D in 2024, so it should safely go D in 2026. 

With that said, we're standing at 230D-205R. The gerrymandering is taking a bite out of the dem margins as nominally my model as it existed when I suspended it would be at 235D-200R, but yeah. That's where I'm at. ChatGPT would probably revise this projection down to like 226D-209R or something given its own differences after debating it the other day, but yeah. The dems are still expected to win the house. I don't think the GOP has been able to gerrymander away the coming blue wave as of yet, but recent court rulings are taking some wind out of our sails and reducing the margins. 230-205 Dem is basically my current estimate though, based on current conditions. Results can vary because statistics can be tricky, and my model is relatively basic anyway. If I had to guess whether dems under or overperform my expections, more likely under, so that means a result in the upper 220s is very possible for democrats. I doubt they get below 225 or so though. 

So let's discuss partisanship on the courts

 So...this article is being precipitated by a few stories. First, there's SCOTUS shooting down part of the VRA, which I've already discussed at length. Second, it's Chief justice Roberts lecturing people for not understanding the courts and claiming to not be partisan (yeah, good luck with selling that one). And third, it's the Virginia Supreme Court shooting down their gerrymandering. 

So, we already discussed the first one, where I have mostly mixed views. I tend to see it as a loss for democrats from a realpolitik perspective, but also I kind of experience schadenfreude with it because let's face it, I dislike racially driven exemptions myself and believe gerrymandering should be banned entirely. I also have a lot of spite toward the democratic party which regularly waves "OMG T3H BLACK VOTE!" in progressives' faces and constantly uses southern black voters and their conservative preferences as a cudgel against us. So pretty complex thoughts there. 

But then, in response to ire over that ruling from democrats, Chief Justice Roberts had the gall to come out and say that we "misunderstand SCOTUS" and that they're NOT partisan actors. As someone who has taken several college classes on our legal system, I'm just gonna call BS on that. 

Its true to some degree, abstractly. SCOTUS is NOT supposed to be a partisan institution. And for much of its history, it was relatively nonpartisan. BUT...that's also not really the case in the modern era. Partisanship exists, especially in recent decades. It just manifests differently. AT BEST, it manifests among different interpretations of the constitution. Let's take abortion for example. Conservative justices tend to interpret things very...plainly. They are "originalists" and "textualists." They like to interpret the letter of the law as written, and as intended by the writers of it. The law is the law is the law. Period. They tend to revere the founding fathers and think we should interpret things strictly, and in the original 1789 version of it. Liberals on the court tend to believe in a more "living constitution." They also interpret the law, but a bit more broadly. They're more likely to think philosophically, and to use legal precedents to enforce their rulings. It's based on the transitive property. If A = B, B = C, and C = D, A = D. Simple, right?

So let's look at abortion. Conservatives will be like ABORTION ISNT IN THE CONSTITUTION, THE FOUNDING FATHERS NEVER WOULD HAVE WANTED A RIGHT TO AN ABORTION, THEY SHOULD JUST READ THE PLAIN READING OF THE TEXT BLAH BLAH BLAH. Liberals who were behind Roe V. Wade looked at things like this. We have a right to privacy as guaranteed by like, the 4th and 14th amendments. That right to privacy gives people a right to use contraceptives (griswold v connecticut), because we established that, we can expand that to include abortion since it's a form of birth control. And that's generally speaking, the rough legal precedent behind the courts. 

And yeah, the partisanship between liberals and conservatives in SCOTUS is basically over that. There isn't as much rank partisanship, at least in theory, but it's pretty partisan.

With that said, lets talk about how the court BECAME partisan since the 1960s and 1970s. So a lot of SCOTUS rulings drew the ire of the conservative population. The right believed that the court back then was being "judicially activist" and "legislating from the bench" and blah blah blah, when they were really just....using legal precedent to expand the understanding of the court to grant new rights and freedoms. And if anything, THAT'S where I'd say the public doesnt understand the court. They thought they were just making crap up and just ruling arbitrarily, and pushing for a more straightforward reading of the text, because high minded philosophical thinking isnt their strong suit. Their supporters would be like IT'S NOT IN THERE PLAIN TO SEE THEREFORE IT DOESN'T EXIST. Because to get to the liberal interpretation, you gotta use your brain a bit in order to reach that conclusion. 

And....let's talk about the current court majority. Since the 1980s with Ronald Reagan, the court has become more partisan. The right went on their own little long term political project to stack the court with conservative, textualist judges to go back to a pre 1960s reading on the constitution, functionally overturning roe v wade, engel v vitale, etc. And then our country would be great and christian again! They started this with the nomination of Robert Bork, who was so extreme with it his nomination was derailed and Reagan was forced to withdraw him and go with Scalia instead. And then they got Kennedy and Thomas. And then they got Roberts and Alito under Bush. And then Scalia died, Kennedy retired, and RBG died too, leading to Gorsuch/Kanvenaugh/Comey-Barrett. And now they're overturning those rulings. Even worse, they're doing their own judicial activism.

I admit, like, in 2016, the dems did use BUT THE COURT as a cudgel to get us to vote for hillary. And i didnt buy it, given my relatively low priority on social issues, and the fact that I did think that even a conservative court would be relatively constrained on what they would do. They wanna maintain legitimacy. But I'm gonna be honest, these guys are just PARTISAN HACKS. They ARE being judicially activist. They ARE throwing out rulings willy nilly. They ARE just manufacturing judicial pretexts for things in my view. I admit, sometimes they restrain themselves somewhat, to maintain the court's legitimacy somewhat, but a lot of the time, they're just giving cover for Trump on stuff, and passing rulings that are flat out scary, like that one that gave Trump the theoretical power to just assassinate people. Ya know? I have trouble taking the current court seriously. They ARE supposed to be principled actors who interpret the law relatively objectively. And yeah, there are some differences in judicial philosophy, but ever since it went 6-3, some justices have felt very emboldened to just do far right rulings. And there are questions of legitimacy, with Clarence Thomas for example being subject to multiple controversies that challenge the idea that he's not being a partisan hack at all. 

And it seems like shooting down part of the VRA was something the right has wanted since the 1960s. Now, admittedly, the ruling was very narrow in scope. But it comes at a time where the republican party clearly wants to draw rigged electoral maps to maintain the house of representatives, which they would otherwise very easily lose. And look, it seems clear this case was set up to challenge that ruling, they knew they could get the courts to rule in their favor on it, and it happened. Sure, Roberts likely restrained it to a narrow ruling because the court has to maintain some image of legitimacy, but this ruling was very partisan in nature. And we can't ignore that SCOTUS is very political. Theres a reason Hillary was able to say "but the court" in 2016. Because the nomination process IS partisan. And when on the court, these justices are typically gonna rule in a certain way. So it's all about packing the court with justices who see things your way. 

Again, to defend my 2016 decision NOT to vote for hillary, I didn't think they would be THIS brazenly partisan, and they've already lost legitimacy in my eyes, like, SCOTUS is supposed to maintain the image of NOT being partisan, despite partisan differences in judicial philosophy, but again, that Trump v US ruling I linked above....yeah....they're just doing whatever tf they want on stuff like that. And that's scary. It's like having a ref blatantly biased toward one team. 

Anyway, that's my view on the Roberts court. He can claim to be nonpartisan all he wants but it's very clear that court is in fact partisan and these guys arent just even having a different opinion on judicial philosophy but are obviously tipping the scales to one side.

Now, on the VA gerrymander situation. I was originally under the impression their supreme court leaned left, and I was originally gonna be like "are we really gonna do this they go low, we go high" BS? I mean, as I see it, the dems are like that sometimes. In the face of blatant partisanship they'll still act all above the fray and like "oh we can't act like THEY do..." Why not? You realize that if one side constrains themselves to the rules while the other side is actively making them and bending them to their favor, that we're gonna lose, right? And given these guys ARE reshaping American government in their image, we seriously gotta use ANY MEANS NECESSARY to protect our vision, and democracy itself. We cant afford to be like "ugh, WE can't gerrymander that's beneath us" while...they aggressively gerrymander. And I hate gerrymandering too. I get the principle. But again, in this current environment, we need to play hardball with the right and not be afraid to punch them in the #### when we get the opportunity. 

 Even more so, I say, show me a good president and I'll show you how they sometimes bent the rules to their favor. I think washington was the only one who didn't, and at that point the country just needed someone like that. But Abraham Lincoln? He suspended habeas corpus. FDR packed the courts. Like, most great leaders in the US who are great BECAUSE they navigated severe crises that would have broke lesser presidents, are great because they read the room, and they realized that they couldnt just sit back and get pushed around. They HAD to act for the good of the nation. And that's where we're at now. In response to this ruling, someone I was watching, I think it was Mike Figuredo, said that we're functionally in a cold civil war. No one is actively shooting and fighting, but yeah the south is rising again and they will use ANY means necessary to grab power and force their vision on us. And unless we're willing to stand up to them, they're gonna win.

Unfortunately I then googled the VA court's partisan leanings and it seems to be 4-3 republican. So....yeah. Again, another bad call from obviously biased refs. 

Anyway I still expect us to win the house this year, but the right is actively trying to sabotage that. And it won't bode well for us in future election cycles. If we retake power in 2028, and we get a trifecta, we need to use ANY means necessary to pass strong legislation to un#### our democracy. Like HR1 but even better. I don't care any more. There's a time to stand in our power, and that time is now. If there's ever been a time, it's now. 

EDIT: Also I wanna be clear, in this era of bad faith misconstruing of comments, when I say any means necessary, I mean legal means of course.  

Documenting performance expectations across hardware generations

 So I decided to do an interesting thought experiment about how standards of performance have changed over time, given the discussion on ray tracing as of late and how I basically said people don't wanna do things as we did in the distant past. 

I was originally gonna focus on SNES/Genesis as the baseline as it was originally the last 2D console, but I've found interesting stats with gen 4, which also apply to gen 3. Virtually all consoles on the nintendo and sega side of things ran at 60 FPS at around 240p. To discuss specifics:

Gen 3 

 NES- 256x240 @ 60hz

Sega Master System-  256x192 @ 60hz

Gen 4

 SNES- 256x240 @ 60hz

Sega Genesis- 320x224 @ 60hz

Sega CD- 320x224 @ 60hz

Sega 32x-  320x240 @ 60 Hz

So, resolution wise, standards were pretty low, but games could run up to 60 FPS. Apparently a lot of 2D games ran at this frame rate (although with some slow down), although if you wanted to run 3D games like Doom or Star Fox you'd chug along at like 15 FPS on the SNES, and down to 20-30 on the 32x. I know for a fact these systems weren't running 3D games at a full 60 FPS because the lag was kinda terrible in retrospect. 

With that said, let's make a transition to 3D.

Gen 5

Sony Playstation- 256x224/320x240 @ 60hz (2D games, 60 FPS, 3D games, 30 FPS)

Nintendo 64- 320x240 to 640x480 @ 20-30 FPS

 Sega Saturn- 320x224 to 704x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Here, they don't even go by hz. I guess all consoles are capable of 60 on paper, but it seems obvious that the standard was 60 FPS for 2D and 20-30 FPS for 2D. A lot of N64 games ran at 20 FPS and that...tracks, in retrospect. It is surprising to see that the N64 and saturn were capable of 480p, but didn't use it. But given the frame rate, I'm not surprised. Looking at a few 3D titles on the saturn that measured FPS, I'm noticing quake hovered around 20 and tomb raider would have frame drops as low as 10 or so.

So yeah. Gaming was rough back in the day. I will admit, UNLIKE RAY TRACING, the jump to 3D was the most mind blowing gaming experience of my life. Like, you had to be there but I remember getting an N64 for the first time and being like HOLY CRAP coming off of the Sega Genesis and 32x. Doom was the most impressive experience I had before this point. 

But yeah, you were largely lucky to get 30 FPS. It was worth it, don't get me wrong. Again, gaming improved at a quantum leap back then.

Oh, and because PC games were kinda weird back then, I'll discuss those too. A lot of them used horribly low resolutions too. 320x200 was the low end, 640x480 was typical, and 1024x768 meant you were pretty ballin' back then. And of course games would run up to 60, but it ultimately depended on your hardware. I'd imagine 640x480 @ 30 FPS was your average experience. 

Gen 6

 Sega Dreamcast- 640x480 @ 60 FPS

 Sony Playstation 2- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

 Nintendo Gamecube- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Microsoft Xbox-  640x480 to 1280x720 @ 30-60 FPS

With gen 6, we seen a general bumping up to 640x480 being standard, which made sense given we still operated on CRT TVs and HD TVs weren't prevalent yet. While games could run up to 60 FPS, it seems like outside of the dreamcast (which had weaker visuals) many games didn't target them, and many instead aimed for 30 FPS. Even on the PS2, which seemed to often target 60, sometimes you'd have games with "half frames" so it actually functioned at 30, and a lot of heavier 3D ports also targetted 30.

Back then, 30 FPS was acceptable because 3D was pretty primitive. I mean,a lot of devs wanted to maximize graphics and frame rates were considered an afterthought. Im under the impression most gen 6 games on average ran a bit better than gen 5, but yeah. 

As for PC, on windows XP you'd run games from 800x600 up to 2560x1440 depending on hardware. Of course, 2560x1440 was quite high end, similar to 4k today. A lot of gamers aimed for closer to the lower end of that spectrum. 60 FPS was common for lighter titles, with people aiming for 30 with heavier.

Also, because the XP era spanned both gen 6 and gen 7, yeah, you can probably imagine there was a bit of variation between say, the early 2000s when gen 6 was in place, and the late 2000s. A lot of early 2000s games often ran more at like 640x480 up to around 1280x1024 in my experience, although i had to run at the lower end of that if the games ran at all. In the late 2000s, I definitely remember targetting 30 in more demanding games. If you wanted to run like Doom 3, or FEAR, or Crysis, you were often settling for 30 on more modest rigs. Still, we started seeing 60 FPS becoming commonplace in the late 2000s as we went into gen 7, and a huge appeal to PC gaming was that PC gamers were running games at higher frame rates, resolutions, and graphics than the consoles could put out. So we did eventually see that standard creeping up by gen 7. As for the consoles...

Gen 7

Microsoft Xbox 360- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Sony Playstation 3- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Nintendo Wii- 640x480 @ 30-60 FPS

Here we see the shift to HD, with the PS3 and 360 typically running at 720p/30 FPS standard. And some games to my knowledge actually ran a bit worse, like think 576p or something in some cases. And frame rates would often chug under 30 in demanding scenes. Yeah, resolutions improved, but frame rates were still limited at the time. 

And of course this is where nintendo kinda went in the direction of underpowered consoles where the Wii was more like....a game cube with motion controls. And it also had 30-60 FPS demanding on the game. A lot of first party titles were 60, but a lot of games ran at 30 and were lucky to run at all. And of course, the Wii generally had reduced visuals too.

PC gaming, as discussed above, also made a transition to higher resolutions as well. Although in this era I largely stayed on a CRT for much of it and ran stuff at a low resolution to maximize frame rates. Again, 30 was still acceptable, especially in heavier titles, but 60 was increasingly commonplace. 

Gen 8

Microsoft Xbox One- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Sony Playstation 4- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

Microsoft Xbox One X- 1080p 60 FPS - 4k @ 30-60 FPS  

Sony Playstation 4 Pro- 1440p-4k @ 30-60 FPS

Nintendo Wii U-  720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

 Nintendo Switch- 720p-1080p @ 30-60 FPS

So this is where things get relatively modern. 720p is now considered the minimum. Some games on weaker iterations of consoles would only get 720p @ 30 FPS, although there were a lot of titles that ran at 30-60 FPS at like 900p and stuff from what I remember. The second half of the generation really pushed boundaries here. The "pro" versions of each handheld released half way through the generations really upped the bar, making 1080p/60 FPS the standard, and with higher resolutions possible. 

PC gaming also raised the bar. I mean, I found 30-60 FPS acceptable in the first half of gen 8 on my dated rig, but 60 became increasingly the norm, with 30 FPS becoming straight up unacceptable as time went on. This trend started in gen 7 I'd say, where 60 FPS started becoming more commonplace due to the higher level of hardware PC gamers tended to enjoy, but yeah, between the pro models of consoles and PC hardware far exceeding console baselines by the second half of the generations, it eventually got to the point of "bro, you still game at 30 FPS? what's wrong with you?" Higher end gamers would push for even higher frame rates and resolutions, but I typically stayed around 1080p/60 to maximize my own builds' longevity.

And of course nintendo stayed at gen 7 levels of fidelity since they started doing their "generation behind but it's cheap" thing. 

Gen 9

Sony Playstation 5- 1080p-4k @ 60-144 FPS

Sony Playstation 5 Pro- 1440p-4k @ 60-120 FPS 

Microsoft Series X-  1080p-4k @ 60-120 FPS

Microsoft Series S- 720p-1440p @ 30-120 FPS

 Nintendo Switch 2- 720p-4k @ 30-60 FPS

 Much like PCs, we seem to be having much higher resolutions and variable frame rates. While 1080p/60 FPS is often considered the baseline, we must not forget that a lot of games want to push boundaries, so some games will actually only run at 30 FPS. FSR is also often used to pad frame rates where you're not getting native solution in games. 

Still, on paper, the bar is rather high. The consoles were largely intended to produce high quality visuals at high frame rates, but some dip#### devs still find it acceptable to foist 30 FPS garbage on us. It's often considered unacceptable when they do.

And this is why ray tracing isn't acceptable even now. In the past few console generations, PCs were often a full generation ahead of the consoles in terms of frame rates and resolution standards. We saw gen 6 console standards implemented during gen 5, we saw gen 7 standards during gen 6, we saw gen 8 standards emerging during gen 7, and we were gaming on gen 9 standards during gen 8. Like, the consoles and the PCs would start at relative parity but then in the second half of the generations the PC would leapfrog the consoles.

This is what I think a huge problem with gaming is, and why a lot of us PC gamers are complaining. When we see devs not optimize their games, or we see them push RT it's like DUDE NO ONE WANTS TO FRICKING GAME AT 30 FPS, WTF IS THIS. 30 FPS gaming hasn't been acceptable since the first half of gen 8. So like 2016ish. 

And yeah, back in the past, it made more sense to trade frame rate for visuals, like gen 5, gen 6, but by gen 7 it started getting a bit old, at least on the PC gaming side of things. It was still acceptable for console ports and more dated PC builds, but yeah, I'd say around 2015-2017 is when 30 FPS REALLY went out of style for good. When I upgraded to my i7 7700k and 1060, it was like "yeah no, no one wants to play at 30 FPS, 60 is the new standard). So yeah. I feel like devs are just kinda out of touch at times.

Even worse, hardware is becoming INSANELY expensive. Like, we're stuck at parity with consoles now. And if anything an equivalent PC is becoming more expensive than a console. This is why I look at $800-1000 consoles next gen with dread. How much am I gonna have to spend to get that baseline of performance? And if they're just gonna try to push 30 FPS or make you get 60 with FSR or even worse frame gen or something, that's gonna be AWFUL. Like an actual REGRESSION. 

I also dont think higher levels of visuals make as huge of a difference as they did. You could argue a FPS regression from the 2D era of genesis/SNES to the PS1/N64 era was well worth it at the time given how revolutionary that was, but ray tracing is just...lighting. And it's more saving devs time on developing their own lighting systems, rather than producing a well worth it visual benefit to customers. 

So yeah. That's the issue of our time, and why we're complaining. We feel like we're now struggling just to stay at the targets we've grown accustomed to, and again, 30 FPS hasn't been common or acceptable in over 10 years now. We live in an era where 1080p/60 FPS feels like it should be the minimum unless you're on an underpowered device like a switch 2 or Xbox series S. We dont WANNA game on less than that. And with the cost of hardware skyrocketing, yeah we ESPECIALLY dont wanna see stuff push boundaries. it wasnt a big deal back in the day if a game like Doom 3, or FEAR, or Crysis pushed boundaries. Games typically ran on 4 year old hardware acceptably (30 FPS low back then), and then when you'd upgrade, your new rig would be 4-8x stronger than your old one. Nowadays, it still costs $300 just to get a PS5 equivalent GPU. 6 years after launch. We should be gaming on 5090 tier hardware by now at that price, but we're not. The whole market is just broken.

And yeah, that's why I decided to do this thought experiment. How did we get from like 240p/20 FPS N64 games to what we consider acceptable today? Gradually, with the bar raising every generation. And many of us dont want to regress to lower frame rates and resolutions just to play games with maxed out visuals. We just don't. It's not worth it. I wish devs would understand this sometimes when we see 30 FPS or sub 1080p resolution targets. That's unacceptable in 2026, go back and fix your fricking games. Because we can no longer rely on hardware enhancements just to power through.  

Was ray tracing a scam?

 So Hardware unboxed came out with a video asking "was ray tracing a scam?" It's an interesting video I largely agree with but I wanna give my own thoughts. My opinion shouldn't be a surprise if you search my blog for previous articles on GPUs and ray tracing, but I do wanna reiterate some thoughts here.

I don't think it was out and out, full on a "scam." However, I would trace the end of the old GPU market as going back to RT becoming a thing. 

I remember when it came out I kinda did think it was scammy in a way. It felt very forced. Like, it was sold as this holy grail that was gonna change everything, and I was just thinking "who actually wants this?" I never heard of  ray tracing before this. The tech was always like something that was oversold, like "it was the future." Kinda like how AI is now "the future." And much like AI, I feel like it was pushed WAAAAY before its time. Like, as steve points out in the above video, the performance wasn't there, and many gamers still dont use it today, me being one of them. And I'll be blunt as to why. The performance hit was too much. 

It's not the 2000s any more. Back in the day, it was acceptable to play games on an old CRT monitor at 1024x768, 800x600, or 640x480, and run the game at 30 FPS. Hell, if you go back to the 90s, you had N64 games with framerates dropping down in the teens and running at like 320x240. And it sucked. And no one wants to play games like that any more. I've watched gaming evolve over time, and as gen 8 became prevalent, things kinda caught up to PC where now we were going up to 1080p/60 FPS. And that's where I'm comfortable playing games. And some wanna do even more. I like to keep my FPS consistently above 60 to keep it stable, often running minimum FPS around 70-80 with averages around 90-100 these days if i can make it work. Of course, with issues...stemming from the introduction of RTX cards, that's becoming difficult these days. 

RT requires TONS of horse power. And unimaginable amount of horsepower. And it's not a tool that's been better for the end consumer. There was an LTT video a while back asking people to pick between the RT and non RT lighted versions of a game and most couldnt tell the difference. What RT DID do was make things easier for developers where rather than implement their own lighting, they could just, BOOM, DONE. They hit the RT button and the RT simulates REAL light instead. It's kinda like me being able to BOOM, hit a button and simulate election outcomes in a way that I used to have to do manually, which would save hours of time. 

But that automation has also led to laziness among devs. It's led to higher system requirements, less focus on optimization. I know Asmongold had a video a while back that I think I discussed on here that mentioned how developers wanna spend as little time optimizing as possible. So that just leads to bloated messes of games. 

And then DLSS and other upscaling acts as a crutch. It's no mistake those technologies were sold along side ray tracing. To make ray tracing usable, they had to reduce the image quality resolution wise to reduce the load on the GPU, functionally regressing us back to the late 2000s in acceptable resolutions, which...look like dog crap on modern monitors. And to compensate, AI upscaling. Which did help extend the life of the old 1060 to some degree. I mean, its better to run FSR than it is to run at a lower res natively. But CLEARLY, neither are preferable. And devs have since focused on pushing graphics at an insane rate, and then expecting upscaling tech to compensate for their lack of optimization. Oh, a game only runs at 720p/30 FPS on a fricking 6650 XT or 3060? Just upscale it bro, what do you want me to do, actually make it playable for you LIKE WE ALWAYS USED TO BEFORE THESE TECHNOLOGIES CAME OUT?! Uh...yeah? yeah. We want games to run well on the hardware available. Again, not against progress, but against progress at all costs.

Like AI, Ray tracing seemed to come way too early, and is pushed way too hard. Its demands are just too high for the hardware available. Even then, ever since ray tracing came out, that's when things started going wrong for the graphics card market. We were told, oh, we cant have sub $300 60 cards any more, RT is too expensive! We gotta put all this extra stuff on the cards and blah blah blah. And that's why the low end GPU market functionally died. Because with the introduction of this crap, it no longer became possible to produce low budget GPUs that were capable of running games. Not only did they not have the horse power, but they also lacked the extra RT/AI components to make that stuff work. The LOWEST END RTX card was $350 at launch. And even now, a 2070 type performance only went from around $500 to around $250 before rampocalypse, and $300 with rampocalypse. And that can BARELY run RT games even now. 

I mean, we could've made GPUs just have more stream processors. It used to be that GPUs advanced in such a way where you would double performance in 3 years at the same price point. But if you look at where the market is in 2026, we're literally only at 2x 2016 performance per dollar. And most of the 2020s has been a massive stagnation. It's like all of these investments are going into RT and all this nonsense instead of just giving us more stream processors and cuda cores. So now we're adding ridiculous demands to games with ray tracing, and then compensating for it with all of these technologies, while the cost of GPUs just keeps going up. People act like this is just the way things are now, that we cant grow at the rate we used to, but MAYBE IF WE JUST PUT MORE CUDA CORES ON A CARD INSTEAD OF THIS EXTRA BS, MAYBE WE'D SEE MORE PROGRESS! 

And you know what? Maybe that progress would scale down too. I think one of the reasons the lower end market died is because they STILL cant even achieve a 2060 baseline of performance with RT. And again, that's just a terrible experience for ray tracing. 

This stuff only really helps the affluent. Those with large budgets willing to dump tons of money into GPUs. But if youre a normal gamer trying to game on like a 3060 tier card (about average these days), it's completely useless. Who the hell uses ray tracing at our price range? If anything, just like steve showed, a lot of gamers are more interested in LOWERING quality settings to run games at higher frame rates. And also, to simplify the graphics to make things more visible, like in the fortnite part of the vid. And I can attest to this. Shadows tend to KILL frame rates, and they tend to make it harder to see enemies. When I optimize games to run on my PC, I turn DOF nonsense off, film grain, all that crap, and then i go for shadows if i need higher frames. And it's just useful to play with lower graphics on competitive games.

So most of us want the industry to go in the direction of simplified visuals with higher frame rates, and these billionaires with a god complex who control the industry are trying to force us to go the other way. And again, there is a market for that. Since then gaming has become increasingly an upper class thing, and more and more out of reach of the masses. It's led to higher costs, poor performance, poor visuals, and people like me feeling like things were just better 10 years ago. 

If I could hit a button that would eliminate ray tracing from the timeline, and instead go in the direction of improving raster, I bet we would have better, cheaper GPUs with cleaner visuals in games. Not necessarily gonna say higher FPS because i think some developers are always gonna take whatever level of hardware is available and then turn around and say "30 fps is good enough", but I think that it would lessen it.

Much like with AI, I feel like these billionaires just tried to replace a lot of old ways of doing things with new workarounds that just arent as good in some ways. Like they are better in some ways, but in other ways, they're just not. And I feel like the gaming industry has just gone in the wrong direction in recent years because of all of this stuff. 

I wont say RT is a full on scam, but I think its impact on the market was always overstated. This is what happens when you leave the entire industry in the hands of a handful of these tech billionaires with a god complex trying to sell their weird visions for what life should be. And then because they hold disproportionate control over the entire industry, they just push it in that direction. And it just isn't all it was cracked up to be. 

Like with AI, maybe tech will get there....in a few decades. But not now, not with current tech. They pushed this way too early, thinking gamers would just accept playing games at some low resolution at 30 FPS again when in reality, no, we like the higher frame rates and higher resolutions more. It's like rather than just give us more raw processing power, they keep trying to sell us technologies instead that are one step forward and 2 steps back. DLSS, frame generation, ray tracing. And then when we tell these guys what we want they look at us like we're luddites. You can think that about me here, but I really do like to see myself as pro technology. But we have to actually think about whether the technology makes sense. 

Like, to go back to election models, yeah, I did GREATLY improve my election forecast abilities by switching to google sheets. And yet....I abandoned ever increasing complexity to my models, and trying to build a version of my simulator that would spit out hundreds, if not thousands of simulations at once. 

Why? Because it didn't make sense. It didn't actually make things better. More complex models have more that can go wrong with them, and I very quickly could tell what went wrong when I started using them. And Im still critical of these big names like 538 who create models so complex that they end up predicting nothing because they're so mired in variables that you can never tell what's going on because things can change. Likewise, I didn't go with the mass simulation model because the thing fricking broke whenever I had to change the data. I have my own technical debt and spaghetti code in my models because quite frankly, I'm not that good with excel. If I take that model and then ramp it up 1000x, the thing bogs down my entire computer when I use it. And if i change the variables or the data, even for routine changes, the whole thing just...breaks down and starts spitting out errors. 

If I were one of those tech bros, I'd basically be like THIS IS THE FUTURE AND I WILL FORCE IT TO WORK ANY WAY BECAUSE IM A SUPER SPECIAL VISIONARY OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY. But being the more reasonable human centered capitalist who tends to operate closer to bill gates "lazy person" approach to things, beyond some point I'm like "this is more work than it's worth, this is close enough."

Ya know? Technology is a TOOL. It's supposed to be useful. If it actually CREATES work and makes things harder and creates massive externalities, or arguably saves only a tiny bit of work at the expense of those externalities, maybe the tool isn't worth using. This doesn't even mean scrap it. I mean, i STILL mess around and experiment with my election models trying to find ways to make them better. I just find that when I do my efforts don't go anywhere, and I just revert to the older, simpler model. Simple works. Complex breaks down and has problems. 

The same can be said with computer graphics. Graphics are a good thing. Making games better is a good thing. BUT, if it comes at the expense of higher costs or the need for weird workarounds like DLSS or frame generation JUST TO BE BORDERLINE VIABLE, it's like...NO, I DON'T WANT THIS! And that's why ray tracing is in the state that it's in. it was released the second it was just barely viable, it barely functions, and the industry hasnt evolved it enough to make it worth using for most people. In the long long term, yeah, maybe it's the future. But we're talking, what, 20-30 years from now? By then we'll be measuring processors in picometers instead of nanometers (if we dont just shift to a different standard altogether) and we'll have tens to hundreds of times more processing power in theory. There's no need to force this crap before it's ready. Which is what these guys are doing. Again. 

Is COD even worth buying these days?

 So....not gonna lie. I know BO7 was mid, but i bought it anyway, figuring I'd be playing it a lot. I havent, in fact, been playing it a lot. I played a lot of BF6, but barely any BO7. And any time I try BO7 i jump on for a few games...and then dont touch the game for another month or two. It's just so mid. And today, i think it clicked with me why it's just so blah for me.

The fact is, it's the maps. The game has THE SAME FRICKING MAPS as virtually every other COD game I've played. I mean, it's more nuketown, more grind, more express, more meltdown. It's the same maps that you can play in the free mobile game, that were new back 15-20 years ago, and that have been remade several times since 2019. 

COD is hopelessly dependent on remakes. It's hopelessly dependent on remaking old maps, again, and again. And then they dominate the play list when you do play. You dont get to play many of the maps that actually were new with this game, no. I mean, sure, they do come up if you play enough, but i swear there are maps in that game I've only played like 1-2 times and then never again. The classics? They just come up again and again and again.  And it makes it feel boring and monotonous.

Here's the thing. These games are expensive. Your yearly COD is $70. It's $50 during the christmas sale. It's $35 when they're starting to sell next year's game. And when you spent all year playing BO6 and playing the same maps over and over again, and then half of the BO7 experience is just...the same maps as BO6...it's like...why even buy BO7? It used to be you pay for new content. That was the purpose in buying a new game. If youre playing the same maps in the new game as you do in the old game, it defeats the point in buying the new game. I can literally play these same maps for free on my tablet if I want. I can start up any older COD from the past 7 years and play them. Why do I need to buy BO7 just to play them? 

I'm not saying remakes are bad. They're not. I enjoyed remastering old games and their levels with MW2019. And BO Cold War. And I especially enjoyed MWIII 2023 basically being a MW2 remake. It's fine ONCE IN A WHILE. Like, oh, these were fun maps 10-15 years ago? let's bring them back, for ONE game. 

But when it's like...let's do this every year, after a while it's like, why am I throwing my money at this franchise? If I can play the exact same content on an older COD, or on the mobile game which is free and has ALL of the classic maps...why bother spending $50 on this? 

I wouldnt mind it as much if the old maps didnt come up as often, but they're a solid 50% of what i play. And to be fair, BO7's actual content isnt really that...good. Like their unique maps arent bad, but most of them arent great or memorable. I enjoy a couple of them I guess. But yeah, after playing so much BF6, this game just feels generic and mid AF. And not in a good, satisfying way which is why i normally buy COD. it does so in a particularly unsatisfying way. Which is why i play a couple matches, get bored, and then I never touch the game again for a whole month or more. The game just feels bad to play. Even by COD standards. I think it's a black ops thing. Treyarch games have always felt like jank to me. IW/sledgehammer games tend to feel better, at least in the modern era. Like the engine feels more modern, the gun play is more satisfying. Again, it's hard to explain but treyarch CODs feel more....floaty? Like the guns dont have impact. And oh my god the fricking movement fricking sucks. It feels like elliott carver's parody of kung fu from tomorrow never dies. Just so much BS sliding around all over the place. i get it, it might appeal to some zoomer twitch streamer, but to normies it just fricking sucks. 

Honestly, the problem to some degree is the yearly model. You pump out a new COD every year, you're gonna retire the actually good ones prematurely, churn out garbage, rerelease the same content year after year with minor variations in game mechanics and getting, and eventually quality declines, it gets old, and you get tired of playing. And that's where I am and why I feel like the entire internet revolted so bad against the game. Because eventually, after years of mediocre games of declining quality and repetitive content, even the fan base eventually reaches a breaking point. Especially when BF comes along and actually innovates and upstages it.

I honestly think BF is a better business model long term. You get actual innovation, actual graphical and game play improvements, and while yeah, they make mistakes as well, and for a while COD was able to take advantage of that and offer a better product (See MW2019 vs BF5, for example), but then BF finally returned to form while COD just ended up going full Ghosts-Infinite Warfare era again. Idk how these guys lost the plot so bad they decided "okay, you know those terrible CODs of the mid 2010s that we dont talk about any more? Let's do that but worse!" But here we are. 

Anyway, I think the market sent clear signals on this one. For all the talk of BF6 dying, COD aint really in great shape either these days. Because you release a mid product, and no one wants to play. In recent years, i think the only thing keeping me playing COD is so little actual competition to it actually exists. Most of the industry is obsessed with extraction shooters and battle royales and esports and the good old casual FPS has kinda died where COD just cornered that market, especially with BF dropping off and taking longer between their own releases. But yeah right now competition exists and it's eating them alive. Back to BF6 I guess. Way more fun anyway.