Grandparent seems to be making a point about the nature of art, and how small variants in the medium make a difference. It will date me a bit, but I'll provide an unrelated example:

When I was little, one of my favorite movies was The Wizard of Oz. I have a cherished memory of my grandmother loading the VHS tape, and explaining what it was like to see color on the screen for the first time.

Many years later, my then-S.O. confesses that she's never seen it, so we rent the DVD. The DVD of the Wizard of Oz looks like garbage. It's obvious where the backdrops meet the ground. The costumes barely work. The trees in the Tin Man scene are straight up hilarious. If you've ever watched the original Star Trek series on DVD or Netflix, picture whatever special effect is most obviously fake to you (for me, it's The Doomsday Machine); the whole movie looks like that.

My grandmother had one experience with the film, never having glimpsed a color motion picture before. I had a different experience, watching from a worn VHS tape whose low fidelity masked a lot of the results of the relatively primitive techniques. My then-S.O. had a third experience, as would a child watching a digital version of the film today. Just because that experience is different (and, in many ways, worse) doesn't mean that the film never should have been digitized. Likewise, grandparent's preference for the original more primitive rendering doesn't mean that the ray-tracing mod never should've been made.

How much of that was VHS masking the primitive techniques, and how much of it was you simply being little and having a young kid's imagination and ability to suspend disbelief? I ask because I've seen old movies on VHS and the special effects didn't seem that much less obvious to me than they would today. Watching Star Trek on a small 640x480 CRT TV, I could still tell the Enterprise was a model and the lizard alien was a guy in an unconvincing suit.

> and the special effects didn't seem that much less obvious to me than they would today

While I understand where you come from, there is still a difference of the medium.

Eg: I have seen Blade (1998) on a VHS first, except it was a pirated copy of a pirated copy. It was a very dark, almost noir toned story, somewhat visually akin to Sin City. Years later, when I saw in a decent quality on a (still analog at that time) TV I didn't recognized it first. And again, years later on a digital TV it became just a bunch of ads for Snipes on a highly lit backdrops and ugly CGI. Somewhat similar, though not that jarring, is my story with Babylon 5. Even when it aired I could see the effects and CGI (they were pretty obvious most of the time) but now the difference of quality (and 38" vs 14") sometimes distracts from immersing to the story.

BTW only with Avatar I finally couldn't reliably distinguish where the CGI starts or ends, but it was a top notch one. I still see the "lame" CGI (especially when a fake motion blur is cranked up to 11) even on a high budget films, like all that comic book adaptations.

It occurred to me that this was a possibility at the time, so I convinced my parents (who were obviously adults when they watched the VHS with me) to check out the DVD also without explaining why. They agreed that the DVD was worse, but not to the same degree that I thought -- so, probably a little from column A and a little from column B.

Put this comment above the fold and I’m a happy man: that was lucid, evocative, and thought-provoking.

I don't mind the downer comments because they provide information. Even if I think this is impressive and awesome, I don't want to see the top comment "this is impressive and awesome!" That's a low information comment.

High information comments don't have to be critical but they often are. Because it's saying something in opposition to the original post. That's why you often see threads that go back and forth between criticism and response. If you agree, you don't need to say anything.

This guy doesn't have zero interest in it. He mentioned he loves doom, the technology and modders but thinks this takes away from the intended well crafted aesthetic value of the game.

“I love DOOM”, “Modern games focus too much on graphics”.

I’m all for spirited and informed debate, but “high information”? You mean in the Shannon sense or the compresses worse than a petabyte of zero sense?

I didn't mean high information in a technical sense. I mean its saying something meaningful or adding something to the discussion. For instance, the original comment was about the aesthetic value of the original as a conscious decision by the artists. Sure they were dealing with constraints as all artists do, but their work is beautiful not so much despite the constraints, but because of them. It's kind of like "fixing" a Haiku by removing the restrictions. Yes, you can make it more informative, but is it really better?

I think that was a meaningful comment that adds to the discussion. I don't think it was snarky or negative just to be negative.

Well, I think it's awesome that somebody tried it. I'd feel bad if the creators saw this thread and felt like HN was rejecting their project or something. I was just curious if anybody else felt the same way I did about how old games that lacked physics-based lighting seemed to look so good.

My theory is that it has to do with how the the screen was always painted with such a bright and wide-ranging palette. One of the other posters described it well as a local optimum. With Doom-style sprites, the art team can decide exactly how the creature / object will look on the screen at render time. Once you introduce physics-based rendering, you always have to consider not just the color of the asset but also the texture, reflectance, and its surroundings (lighting, ambient occlusion, etc.). It's actually very similar to the difference between a painting and a photograph, now that I think about it.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you want each frame to be a painting in a physics-based rendering paradigm, it could turn out that this requires WAY more work to achieve because you have to contend with a combinatorial explosion of interactions between your many assets and light sources. I suspect some studios will assume that all they have to do is take some nice-looking assets and "bump the lamp", but I think ray-traced Doom is a big clue that that won't work out very well. And sure, it will be cool for a few minutes while you marvel at some effect that is only possible with a ray-tracer, but they won't get replayability for free out of that. After a while, the player will get sick of pitch dark hallways with swinging overhead lamps full of glowing crystals or whatever.

My prediction is that ray-traced games may simply find a different approach to beauty. I'm picturing the difference between some renaissance masterpiece and a beautiful black-and-white photograph. Each pretty in their own way.

The right answer is whatever the heck they want to say. As someone who agrees strongly with them I appreciate having my point of view represented.

I feel like you misinterpreted the initial comment and you’re now using that as a reason to go on your own unrelated rant. Nobody said that Doom mods are bad or that they’re corrupting Id’s legacy or even that this specific Doom mod was a mistake. They just don’t like the way it looks, that’s it. It’s not that big of a deal.

I didn’t misinterpret anything. OP saw an opportunity to take a shot at something and get some replies, fair play that’s what HNers do when we’re bored, myself included.

I saw someone talking nonsense about a topic I’m versed in and snapped them off at the stem over it, also what HNers do when they’re bored.

Because people like me vote them up, because we prefer interesting, informed critique rather than uncritical positive support.