That moment when you realize old game worlds were just smoke and mirrors
Just went down a rabbit hole about Gas Town from Mad Max and honestly... my mind is blown by how clever devs were with their tricks. Reading the breakdown of how they built this massive-looking wasteland on limited hardware - it's all carefully placed dust clouds, strategically angled buildings, and LODs switching right at the edge of your perception. Made me think about all those PS2/Xbox games I played as a kid. I genuinely believed those worlds were HUGE. Nope - just really smart level design and a bunch of fog. Like, there's something almost magic about it? They couldn't brute-force realism so they had to actually understand how our brains fill in gaps. Now we have the processing power to render everything and sometimes games feel... emptier? Give me a small world packed with clever illusions over a giant procedurally generated map any day
