On: Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display

[digisign]

Asteroids was a vector game, interesting technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_%28video_game%29

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

[joezydeco → digisign]

Jed Margolin (ex-Atari) has the definitive history of the Atari vector games and how the hardware works:

http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm

http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm

Asteroids was a humble 6502 running at 1.5 MHz with a PROM-driven pseudo-CPU acting as the vector generator.

[kubiiii → digisign]

Better resolution and frames per second than modern games :)

[john-waterwood → kubiiii]

Like a plotter, effectively infinite resolution (not really infinite because of the phosphor elements being finite, but still).

The limitation shifted elsewhere of course, and that's in the complexity of the scene, specifically the number of objects.

Still, interesting tech and can even be adapted to control a laser unit that renders on say a big building or even the clouds (the real ones).

[joezydeco → john-waterwood]

not really infinite because of the phosphor elements being finite

There are other limitations, such as beam deflection imprecision and precision/speed of the A/D converter and the size of the electron beam in relation to it's brightness. Tighten the beam focus to get more precision, but it will be way dimmer and harder for a player to see. Make the beam stronger to compensate and you'll burn a hole in the phosphor. Your costs also go up with the fancier parts and beefier power supply.

The Atari system settled on 1024 points of resolution on each axis (but clipped to 1024x768 for the 4:3 monitors used at the time). Still a lot more resolution than the low-res arcade monitors of the day, which were roughly CGA-class (around 320x240).

[rbanffy → john-waterwood]

Playing Asteroids on a building would be kind of neat. Has anybody tried that?

[joezydeco → rbanffy]

Yup. There were some laser enthusiasts that connected their projection systems to MAME and created Laser MAME.

Laser galvo speed is a big factor in making it work effectively but there have been some great demos, like John Knoll (from ILM) playing Atari Star Wars on a theatre screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4REBVgm4Nc

[jgeorge → digisign]

Vector CRTs are all kinds of neat technology. I own a Tempest arcade cabinet, which is a color vector CRT, and it's such a huge difference from using regular raster CRTs.

[mnw21cam → digisign]

Back in '97, I built myself a vector graphics card for a computer which plugged into an oscilloscope for a university project. Good fun. Of course, to persuade the university to let me do it, I described it as a "programmable dual synchronised waveform generator", but it was always intended to display images.

[JohnTHaller → digisign]

It is. It was only 2 colors, but it was high resolution, especially compared to other screens at the time. There's one in my Vectrex sitting near my desk.

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

[alricb → digisign]

Another use of vector graphics is in older aircraft displays, where the writing and lines would be rendered that way, sometimes with raster scanning for the artificial horizon.