Fog in every game
Nowadays, there are a variety of graphic options with which video and computer games can be tailored to the user’s desires. Especially on PC, you are overwhelmed by optimization options, and the settings fill several pages.
But did you know that in many games, fog was not an additional feature for better atmosphere, but a limitation? Many games on the PlayStation or Nintendo 64 could only display 3D graphics to a limited extent. To avoid overwhelming the processing power of the old consoles, games had a limited viewing distance, a low draw distance.
This led to games like “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” or “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” appearing foggy, with objects that were more than 20 or 30 meters away disappearing into fog.
While this wasn’t too wild for some games, adventures and shooters in particular suffered from this issue. In action titles like Turok, players often wandered around for hours because they couldn’t see the one tunnel or path unless they were directly in front of it. It was especially frustrating when large enemies simply disappeared into the fog, and players were killed by them because the weather didn’t cooperate.
Today, fog is a feature that is supposed to make games more realistic and atmospheric – back then, it was a technological constraint and looked terrible.
