Plato experience is still active including the games at https://www.cyber1.org/
Regards, Tarek Hoteit AI Consultant, PhD +1 360-838-3675 https://tarek.computer INFOCOM AI LLC - https://infocom.ai > On Apr 13, 2024, at 10:20, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > > >> On Apr 12, 2024, at 9:49 PM, ben via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >> On 2024-04-12 7:23 p.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >>>>> On Apr 12, 2024, at 5:54 PM, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk >>>>> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> ... >>>>> my favorite terminal 3190 that was neon gas, so monochrome, but could >>>>> take 5 addresses, and flip between 62 lines of 160 characters (always >>>>> there), to 4 terminals of 62x80 any two visible at a time, or 4 terminals >>>>> of 31x160 characters, any 2 visible at a time, or 4 terminals of 31x80 >>>>> all visible at once. when given a choice, my new boss was surprised that >>>>> I chose that instead of the color 3279 with graphics that everybody else >>>>> wanted. Great for running virtual systems... >>> Sounds like the plasma panel displays that were invented for the PLATO >>> system, by Don Bitzer and a few others, at the U of Illinois. Inherent >>> memory: if you lit a pixel it would stay lit, to turn it off you'd feed it >>> a pulse of the opposite polarity. So it was a great way to do 512x512 >>> bitmap graphics with very modest complexity, no refresh memory needed. >>> paul >> >> But too slow I suspect to run a game like spacewar. > > PLATO was the system where a whole lot of early games first appeared, > especially multi-player games. Among them were any number of variations of > "Star Trek" inspired ones. While you couldn't refresh a screen full of space > ships in motion as fast as you can on a dedicated graphics engine, it was > certainly acceptable for the players. And a simpler two-ship game like the > original spacewar would work even better, because you'd only need a couple of > operations per refresh -- on the classic terminal, 12 output words at 60 per > second, so 200 ms per refresh. Not quite "full motion" but close. > > paul >
