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The Late 80s through Late 90s/Early 2000's: Best Time for Culture in Recent History?


Kurshok

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I miss the tye-dye patterns on clothing, the Blockbuster, I miss when content on TV wasn't by a majority crap. I miss the sense of "things are good and can only go uphill" and the retro aesthetics of gaming back then. I miss when the political aisles weren't constantly at each other's throats. I remember when Burger King and KFC actually tasted good, before they started to cut costs and went downhill in a vicious cycle. I remember a quality B-Movie coming out every few months on Sy-Fy, and the air seemed cleaner, somehow, less polluted. Weather wasn't as fucked from climate change either. I know, it sounds like I'm bitching, but despite the arguably "better" graphics, games and movies seem to be getting dumber down.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I do like culture from eighties, but later not as much. That being said nowadays totalitarian culture is even worse, of course, artistic freedom is oppressed similarly like it was done in USSR, which produces loads of 'politically correct' trash that nobody likes, except utter zombies. I'm even struggling to find good books that wouldn't be SJW/libtard propaganda garbage. In USSR we could at least use the propaganda books as kindling for fireplace, but nowadays the digital books can't be even burned, unfortunately, they just waste space on servers and waste our time.
And I know a lot of my liking towards older games is just nostalgia. Like how the older fps'es had so much more stagnant and therefor spookier environment and atmosphere, Thief included in those. 
And I do love all that 80ies retrofuturism stuff that's somewhat revived these days, not as much on mainstream, but if you search a bit. I didn't even live that long in the eighties myself and it's debatable whether the period even affected me back then.

Regarding climate - I haven't felt any differences in all my life in those continents that I roam around.
But if you dislike Earth's climate - there's always the option to go to live on Mars, Musk's a great man, that planet will become a great republic over time.
 

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As someone said, in the past everything was better, even the future. I don't think that a certain time was better than another in culture and art, there are always good things and also bad things, as in everything. The only thing that happens is from the past the good things remain in the memory, the bad are forgotten. This is why I never talk about things 'in my times', because I think that my times are now, keeping my 'OS' updated.

Edited by Zerg Rush

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/5/2021 at 2:21 PM, Zerg Rush said:

As someone said, in the past everything was better, even the future. I don't think that a certain time was better than another in culture and art, there are always good things and also bad things, as in everything. The only thing that happens is from the past the good things remain in the memory, the bad are forgotten. This is why I never talk about things 'in my times', because I think that my times are now, keeping my 'OS' updated.

Both good and bad with that id say :) after microsoft decided to just force updates you are now facing inherent system failures because of unstable and not thorougly tested system updates, and then there is the idea they had with making the OS into an ad driven mess. Hell i could sorta get behind it if win10 was a free OS but it is not...

Weather "has" been getting odd in the later years, just here in denmark we are either drowning in rain or soaking in our own fat because the temperatures are reaching extremes which we have newer had before.

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I look back on the late 80s to late 90s quite fondly. I was born in 81 so those years were some of the best in my life. I don't know if things were actually better then or if memory is selective as Zerg Rush said. We tend to forget painful things and exaggerate the good times. It is human nature. I think some of what may give the illusion of things generally being worse is the connectedness of the world now. The ease with which information flows to every corner of the earth. The internet, cell phones all make it easier for information to spread and for people to individually share their feelings or gossip to the masses. Misery does love company and people love to spread the latest bad news rather than share joyful events. We also seem oddly drawn to it in general as well if you follow internet and youtube trends. Negativity and drama get the most attention. I feel its almost created a feedback loop of sorts where many people hyper fixate on themselves and their problems since that is what they see most being shared by others. It gets attention and it just breeds more and more of it. I do think, at least in the US, that movies, games and many other forms of entertainment have been impacted by the current culture war. Call it wokeness or political correctness or give it whatever label you wish, but the end result is that offense has become taboo and cancel culture pushes all of the various entertainment mediums towards sterilization and blandness. Collectivism doesn't exactly foster creativity after all. There's also the obvious profit motive that drives games to focus on accessibility to boost sales. Get the game in the most hands possible. Ultimately gameplay gets simplified and difficulty gets driven into the dirt. I don't think a good game can possibly appeal to everyone. We all have individual tastes and prefer different games but the genres of games have decreased and the differences between genres has become less distinct. Many games attempt to be a jack of all trades rather than taking a risk on an idea that may only appeal to few.

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I don't pay too much attention to the OS, while it does what I want, the internet is seen through the browser and from there all the OS are the same.
I currently use Windows 10, which is going smoothly, after taking away bad habits, telemetry and MS Crap, to 'improve the user experience'. I also have no problem switching to Linux, if one day Windows gives me a dislike.

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The old dogs like us who know how to hack it when microsoft does something we dont like might have this down to an art :) bit more problematic for the avarage user these days. For me the 80's was a time of change i was growing into adulthood and needed to find my place and what i wanted to be. Things didnt pan out to well because of bad descisions taking a scholarship as a radio technician which a few years after was made allmost obsolete when the industry settled on creating cheap hardware which ment that the price of getting it repaired was most times larger than simply buying new. Got by in the meantime after my workplace went bankcrupt because of the above by working in a bronze meltery, 3 years after i had aquired my first discus prolaps being the tallest guy who worked there it kinda made sense with the heavy stuff heh.

Took me a few years to get my nose above water after that and made me realize that i was not cut out for jobs doing heavy lifting and for a time i did logistics and some cnc programming for one of vestas subcontractors. After that i was unemployed for some years ( no jobs anywhere in my area ) then i got some jobs as a vicariate and unfortunatly some of those involved heavy lifting so after a few years i started to develop symtoms that my back was giving out again (took me more than one hour to walk 500 meters) and one day i fell down a ladder and that was the end of it or so i thought. Turned out that not only had i developed another discus prolaps but when i finally got operated to stabilize my back they found out it was broken (possibly from that fall from the ladder) and i had been moving about for more than 10 years with it in that state (it newer healed in that time). Sadly 10 years with a broken back had made a number on the nerve connections to my legs so i had lost all feeling besides a burning sensation that was allways there even after i got operated, and the operation has made it impossible for me to bend my back.

So now i mostly use what time i can stand sitting down doing the odd community job using what little skill i aquired over the years in programming.

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On 5/17/2021 at 1:47 PM, ate0ate said:

I look back on the late 80s to late 90s quite fondly. I was born in 81 so those years were some of the best in my life. (...)

Ah another one from 81 🙂 . I agree with what you say, although there are more indy developers nowadays and the use of crowdfunding to not be restricted by the big publishers. This is also an element of curent times.

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1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Btw. did anyone remember autostereograms, I remember this was a huge hit somewhere in the 90's. I had a calendar with these puzzly images. I wonder if you can use such images in TDM to hide certain information. Like this stone wall for example:

obj.jpg

Ah, yes I remeber those. It should definitely be possible. Actually, a friend of mine wrote his "Facharbeit" (kind of a small thesis you need to write to finish your secondary school in Germany) in maths about generating these. In this case, it was only words that floated in space and no 3D models or something, but it should not be too difficult. It was "only" a small thesis for school, after all. However, for TDM I believe that it would be rather immersion breaking. And it can also be frustrating for people who cannot do it, so there should always be an alternative way to sove it.

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By using the cross eye technique for 3D stereo images, I can see a triangle and a circle in that wall texture, is that all? But I'm with Destined on this, many people can't do the necessary eye coordination to do this, so they will just see a ugly texture and fail to solve the puzzle or think something is wrong with the game or mission.

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I was thinking the same thing, you absolutely have to combine it with another possible way to see, but I still think it could be cool, especially if you don't tell people. I mean it could also be non vital info. Could just be some sort of hidden decoration.

 

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Magic Eye!

Oh man does that bring back some memories. They were most commonly bundled in a glossy print collection and sold as a book called "Magic Eye" here in Pennsylvania. They were hugely popular when I was in elementary school. I remember begging my Mother to purchase all three books each year when one came out. We had a little shop in the school that sold them and they always sold out rather quickly. I would spend hours crossing my eyes just right to make out the hidden images. Some of them were rather impressive and the effect could be quite clear when done properly.

I do recall that many of my friends couldn't perform the eye movements to see the images at all and I myself struggled initially. Success was often determined by holding the book at exactly the right distance from yourself and crossing your eyes to a specific point where just a millimeter off either way meant failure. That's how it felt as a child at least lol. Sure would give you a nasty case of eye strain going through the whole book in one sitting too! That would certainly be a really cool easter-egg to see in a game somewhere but it would be rather mean to hide mission critical information in something like that. Still, I would personally love to see it.

EDIT: Looks like the book had a 25th anniversary special lol. There are some pretty cool sample images here you can check out for free too and find out more about the books.

Sorry. The nostalgia got me on this one.

Edited by ate0ate
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My eye muscles never worked for this, so I always had to do it the crosseyed route (which as you all probably know reverses the effect, innies become outies and vice versa).

I remember going through a whole book of them over like an hour or whatever, and after I'd finished, I realized my eyes just stayed crossed and I couldn't flex them back straight; even after applying some effort to it, they'd just push back crossed. It  stayed like that for at least a good minute or two, and I recall a few moments panicking and thinking, "Well shit. I guess this is it. They're stuck like this for good now." 🤣

Fortunately they did finally ease their way back into place, and I've made sure to practice moderation in my eyecrossing antics ever since.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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14 minutes ago, datiswous said:

I guess this probably isn't possible, but would it be possible to simulate the effect by sliding two textures over each other? This way you can have the game do the work, instead of your eyes.

The effect is generated in your brain because the two eyes focus on different parts of the image which are similar enough (at the random dot level) for the brain to "match them up" and resolve into an apparent 3D image. Simply putting two parts of the stereogram on top of each other would not produce anything other than a meaningless fuzzy image.

In any case, "simulating" 3D in a game by processing random dot stereograms wouldn't make any sense, because the stereograms are themselves generated from a 3D model, which the game could just render directly using OpenGL.

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As an amusing aside to this, does anyone remember those little "find the differences between these two images" puzzles that would appear in the newspaper or various magazines at times? I learned that you could do the eye-crossing maneuver on those two images and easily spot the differences in seconds. I would try to defocus my eyes to get the two images to "overlap" thus making a third combined image where the differences kind of shimmered and stood out so you could see them really easily. I never found any use for this other than nifty childish party-trick, but I thought I'd share.😀

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On 5/19/2021 at 6:59 AM, revelator said:

The old dogs like us who know how to hack it when microsoft does something we dont like might have this down to an art :) bit more problematic for the avarage user these days. For me the 80's was a time of change i was growing into adulthood and needed to find my place and what i wanted to be. Things didnt pan out to well because of bad descisions taking a scholarship as a radio technician which a few years after was made allmost obsolete when the industry settled on creating cheap hardware which ment that the price of getting it repaired was most times larger than simply buying new. Got by in the meantime after my workplace went bankcrupt because of the above by working in a bronze meltery, 3 years after i had aquired my first discus prolaps being the tallest guy who worked there it kinda made sense with the heavy stuff heh.

Took me a few years to get my nose above water after that and made me realize that i was not cut out for jobs doing heavy lifting and for a time i did logistics and some cnc programming for one of vestas subcontractors. After that i was unemployed for some years ( no jobs anywhere in my area ) then i got some jobs as a vicariate and unfortunatly some of those involved heavy lifting so after a few years i started to develop symtoms that my back was giving out again (took me more than one hour to walk 500 meters) and one day i fell down a ladder and that was the end of it or so i thought. Turned out that not only had i developed another discus prolaps but when i finally got operated to stabilize my back they found out it was broken (possibly from that fall from the ladder) and i had been moving about for more than 10 years with it in that state (it newer healed in that time). Sadly 10 years with a broken back had made a number on the nerve connections to my legs so i had lost all feeling besides a burning sensation that was allways there even after i got operated, and the operation has made it impossible for me to bend my back.

So now i mostly use what time i can stand sitting down doing the odd community job using what little skill i aquired over the years in programming.

As someone said 'In the past everything was better, even the future'
Now I am retired, picking my nose, listening to Death Metal, playing TDM, trolling in some forums, having a few drinks with friends as far as COVID allows .....
I've also had a pretty busy life and experienced all the highs and lows possible. Now I live in the south of Spain and I enjoy with my wife the good weather in a good neighborhood, and with everything I need within a radius of 2 km.

Edited by Zerg Rush

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17 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

As someone said 'In the past everything was better, even the future'
Now I am retired, picking my nose, listening to Death Metal, playing TDM, trolling in some forums, having a few drinks with friends as far as COVID allows .....
I've also had a pretty busy life and experienced all the highs and lows possible. Now I live in the south of Spain and I enjoy with my wife the good weather in a good neighborhood, and with everything I need within a radius of 2 km.

Well got a ways to go before that, in denmark you can only go on pension if you're from my time at the age of 69 (unless you are as rich as bill gates) and the younger you are today means this gets pushed even farther. The youngest people here today will only leave the working force feet first so i kinda feel bad for them.

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In Spain it is 65, although they want to increase the age, respectively the years of contribution. But there is still a debate to reduce the retirement age, in view of a high youth unemployment, it is absurd that a person has to work until an advanced age, while there are no jobs for young people. 35 or 32 hours a week, to better distribute the labor market also is discuted.
Well, this for me is already a trance past several years ago.

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On 5/19/2021 at 12:56 PM, datiswous said:

Btw. did anyone remember autostereograms, I remember this was a huge hit somewhere in the 90's. I had a calendar with these puzzly images. I wonder if you can use such images in TDM to hide certain information. Like this stone wall for example:

obj.jpg

I don't know if I like this idea

gOxl6Tn.png

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1 hour ago, Zerg Rush said:

I don't know if I like this idea

Nothing wrong with giving your eyes some rest (defocus). It's the oposite way that is wrong.

Edit: maybe I don't know that. Anyway, I don't know if I ever use it and I would probably only use it for non-fital info. Seems unlikely that other people will implement this.

Edited by datiswous
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10 hours ago, datiswous said:

Nothing wrong with giving your eyes some rest (defocus). It's the oposite way that is wrong.

Edit: maybe I don't know that. Anyway, I don't know if I ever use it and I would probably only use it for non-fital info. Seems unlikely that other people will implement this.

Nothing to do with defocus the eyes, a autostereoscopic image need to defocos BOTH eyes to see the image. People with deficient vision (like me, my old eyes ar not what they was in the past and with this autostereoscopic images I have a hard time seeing them, not like when I was younger) or with only vision in one eye, can't see stereoscopic images

Even on the web I have to use a bot, like Buster, to prove that I am not a bot in the captchas, so as not to be blind in the attempt to solve them.

Edited by Zerg Rush

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