ABSTRACT
The late 1980s and mid-1990s saw a revolution in multimedia. Programs such as Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia and The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia brought text, image, sound, and video together, which allowed new ways to present, access, and understand information. Many games of the period used the above advances to bring a greater sense of visual realism to gameplay that was generally expressed in one of two ways. The first focused on photo-realism, which was attained through using a mix of digitized images, full motion video, and pre-rendered 3D imagery. The second approach focused on spatial realism and was achieved through the real-time calculation of 3D filled polygons. The rapid evolution of game technologies in the mid to late 1990s greatly improved the range of application and level of detail allowed in real-time 3D games. As real-time 3D flourished, interest in using film in games for both gameplay and narrative purposes faded, largely disappearing by the turn of the millennium.
