God bless Syd Mead.

END OF LINE, PROGRAM

Oh man, the bit at 6:40 where the tank gets knocked off the ledge? I remember seeing this movie in a theater for the first time and being completely blown away when I realized I had just seen an honest-to-god *specular highlight* for the first time outside SIGGRAPH, something that was so insanely computation-intensive it was amazing they could afford to do it even for a big-studio movie. Tron was Gouraud-shaded, not Phong (and no texture maps!) but back in the day it was a real piece of work. They were freed by what they could do, not limited by what they couldn't. Too many people never learn that trick.

A good many of us have hundreds of times their graphical computing power on our desks now, used for TF2 and porn, and we spent probably a ten-thousandth of the money to get it. At the time, it was utterly mind-blowing. Things have come a long way, but that doesn't make this one bit less impressive.

Automatic 5 stars + favourite (+ extra stars for Repo's nerd-tastic anecdote).

This is who we are.

Seems strange these days doesn't it? If there was a video game with real-time, rendered graphics that didn't have bump maps or texture maps, no one would play them. Five stars for Tron, five stars for Syd Mead, five stars for Repomancer and five stars for everyone who knows what a specular highlight is.