I'm not sure how new this thing is or if it's been posted before as it seems to date back to the end of last year, but seeing as Google has Q2 running on HTML5 inside the browser I thought it only fair to share the Flash version of Q1. Enjoy. Seriously - you have to enjoy this. Because this is challenging pie. And it is not easy to challenge pie, nosir.

Quote: Original post by owl
This is the future of gaming.

Q2 had sub-par graphics when it came out originally. You know, over a decade ago.
Q1 was cool back in the day when people were amazed at real-time pseudo-3D scenes made out of 25 triangles.

And today, in the age of multi-GPU configurations which can do bazillion phong-shaded, bump mapped, SSAO shaded triangles people get excited over the fact that Q1 and Q2 barely work...

In other news, I have made a wheel. It's not really round, but it's a start. I expect it to be usable in real world in some 5-10 years.

>>excited over the fact that Q1 and Q2 barely work...<<

Its certainly a major step up from what Ive seen so far with 3d browser stuff!
i.e. a proof of concept

The great thing with this is
(*) (nearly) all capable devices can view html, be they windows PCs, macs, phones whatever.
Thus provided theyve got the grunt to display html5 + a html5 browser the software dream of write once, view everywhere is finally a reality

Antheus - I'm not sure I can understand the source of your reservation. You, of all people, should be able to appreciate the importance of innovation. And on a relative scale, this is innovative. Not innovative in a look-we-made-a-new-thing kind of way, but in a look-we-made-it-work kind of way.

Furthermore, SSAO, shaders and all that are just crap that runs on your graphics card (eg bound to localized limitations). This doesn't impose <iany<i/> kind of limitation or handicap on the FPS-in-the-browser paradigm itself: in fact, if the Q1/Q2 port were to include contemporary shaders, these would take up an infinitely small fraction of the bandwidth and would be able to run on your GPU provided you have one. This is not a limitation of the technology - it's a limitation of the choice of software that has been ported. Moreover, I'm confident that the choice was made largely based on bandwidth. I would be almost equally as impressed if my browser allowed me to play Doom 2 in fullscreen because the technology here is the web-based port meeting certain framerate and resolution criteria, not shader-specific technical criteria. Q1 shipped at around 60 MB without music; cranking up the amount of geometry and texture quality to Doom 3 level - and, oh, also the bandwith to 4GB - would defeat the purpose for reasons that have nothing to do with what this is demonstrating.

Quote: Original post by owl
Yeah. I meant that soon we won't need to install the games in our machines. They will be served to us as we play them.

I can even envision that someday, games won't even run in our PCs, we will be served with the video while our input gets transmited to the server. People won't even need good video cards to play games with complex graphics.

And when the company that provides me with its games shuts down I can't play them anymore. No, thanks. I don't want that kind of future.

Quote: Original post by owl
Yeah. I meant that soon we won't need to install the games in our machines. They will be served to us as we play them.

I can even envision that someday, games won't even run in our PCs, we will be served with the video while our input gets transmited to the server. People won't even need good video cards to play games with complex graphics.

There was a really slick demo from a start-up that is doing exactly this. They were doing Far-Cry (I think), served remotely from their game-centers (located at major isp-hubs in the country), to dumb terminals attached to your TV. The trick was in their video compression software. But basically, the dumb box just displayed video and sent your controller signals over the net.

It was really smooth, and really impressive. I can't find the video, unfortunately. But it looked like a really, really cool system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onlive

Ild say we're at least 10 years away from having this as standard, bandwidth concerns and all that.

Though the future is certain + has been apparent for the last 5+ years, PCs are becoming less and less important. I wouldnt be surprised if in ~6 years half the webusage come from non pc devices, already its over 2%!