Ooh, fun topic! OK, here are some of my most memorable futuristic moments:

-I will never forget the time I saw a computer with an MPEG board playing Jurassic Park--the entire movie--off of a CD ROM at a computer show in the early '90s. Standard Def Preteen was like, "THEY CAN DO THAT NOW? Why the hell am I still playing Shuffle Puck and Carmen Sandiego on a barely color Mac at home?" I've been a digital video nerd ever since. Cameras, compression, editing, transmission, digital cinema; you name it and I'll likely think that it's very, very cool indeed.

Speaking of digital cinema, I remember when one of our local theaters switched to digital projection--I believe it was around 1999 or 2000. They closed for a month and upgraded not only the projectors, but the sound as well. When they reopened, I watched Toy Story 2 and swear to god, that was the experience that inspired me to really get into home theater. I just wanted to recreate that experience at home.

The airport scene near the end of the movie especially blew my mind. When that plane transitioned from the rear channels to the front -- rattling the seats and making my freakin' pant legs flutter in the process -- I had tears in my eyes and hot buttery popcorn all over me!

-Flat panel monitors. Yeah, I know people on vintage computer forums love to hate them, but the moment in 2004 I upgraded from a CRT that could barely resolve 1280x960 to a digitally connected 1920x1200 LCD that could easily display the smallest fonts right down to the pixel, well, I may as well have changed my Interweb name to High Def Steve right then and there.

-Smart/automated home stuff. Yeah, I know people on vintage computer forums love to hate them, but the day Standard Def Homeowner started using it, he was like, what alternate dimension did I just step into? You're telling me I can control indoor lights, outdoor lights, even Christmas lights from a pocket computer that has 12 entire gigabytes of RAM in it? And, not only that, I can lock/unlock the doors? Adjust the temperature of the hot water coming out of the taps? The air temperature and humidity?! And it can even send me a steady stream of data about the current heating/cooling demand in 1% increments, compressor RPS, blower RPMs, burner BTUs, suction and liquid line PSIs, even superheat? Wait, that last one has to be a mistake, because this stuff is super cool baby! Sure, it could all go south in the dead of winter like the birds. But it hasn't yet, so I'm just gonna continue to be happy and impressed.

-CDs and digital transports. Yeah, I know that real audiophiles on serious audiophile forums love to hate them. Here's the thing though. One day, Standard Def's dad brought home a CD player that could actually talk to the amp using light, and that fascinated him to no end. How can a tiny, unblinking LED inside of the TOSlink socket "tell" the amplifier and speakers how insanely chaotic Glenn Tipton's guitar solos are supposed to sound in Painkiller??

By using pulse code modulation, you say? So you mean to tell me that the LED is actually pulsing, only a lot faster than our standard def eyes can perceive? And the little chips in the receiver string those pulses together tens of thousands of times per second to make them sound like steadily flowing music to our standard def ears? OK, that's almost magical, but how does all this digital tomfoolery actually sound?

Un-bloody-believable, of course! The sweet, sweet treble that was missing from my old tapes and records made everything sound so open and real, and I was instantly hooked. I began spending most of my paper route money double-dipping; that is, buying all of my favorite albums again--except this time on bit perfect CDs. Turns out that Dad's old speakers really did have it in them; I just never knew it, thanks to our worn to bits analog media. In fact, the experience was akin to tasting real chocolate for the first time. Before I got to taste the Real Deal, I thought that an Oh Henry bar was about as good as it ever got. But once that first bar of fine swiss chocolate melted in my mouth, I practically passed out from pleasure. It was all over for me and ole Henry after that; you might as well give me a brown crayon to chew on. And that's exactly how it is with digitally stored and transported audio. You never know just how much crud your ears accept until you hear a really clean source and signal path for the first time!

-This one's recent. When I strapped a 16-core 5950X to my motherboard's brain socket a couple of years ago, it really did feel futuristic as hell! At least, it gave me the same intensely pleasurable feeling I got when I installed a PowerPC upgrade card in the family Quadra decades ago. I can still recall my lips flapping in the intense whirlwind of MIPS surging out of the mysterious silicon card I had so inconspicuously planted in our edutainment mainframe! I probably looked a little like Woody in Toy Story as he rapidly approached the U-Haul with Sid's rocket strapped to his back!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:03:

-Smart/automated home stuff. Yeah, I know people on vintage computer forums love to hate them, but the day Standard Def Homeowner started using it, he was like, what alternate dimension did I just step into? You're telling me I can control indoor lights, outdoor lights, even Christmas lights from a pocket computer that has 12 entire gigabytes of RAM in it? And, not only that, I can lock/unlock the doors? Adjust the temperature of the hot water coming out of the taps? The air temperature and humidity?! And it can even send me a steady stream of data about the current heating/cooling demand in 1% increments, compressor RPS, blower RPMs, burner BTUs, suction and liquid line PSIs, even superheat? Wait, that last one has to be a mistake, because this stuff is super cool baby! Sure, it could all go south in the dead of winter like the birds. But it hasn't yet, so I'm just gonna continue to be happy and impressed.

NO ! That smart stuff relies on getting electricity and nearly all advanced countries are at the brink of brown-outs and lack of power due to stupid regulations and the data centers using nearly as much as everyone combined for the homes.
For what ? Facebook, Google, Amazon ? That is not smart of us !
Another is like car self braking, self parallel parking (because we forgot/never learned how), self driving cars, etc is or will make us bad and unobservant drivers = dumber not smarter.
Or the smart cam in the frig because we are getting so dumb we cannot check what we need before we go shopping ? Really ?
Yes I do have some of that smart stuff but have noticed if I rely on all of it instead of my brain then I am playing into the fact we are not advancing as a human race but relying on our advancements to cover for our now not advancing....
Smart technology means you rely on someone or something else to make your life easier, once you become addicted to it, that makes you a slave to that technology and not a master of your own life.
Ok rant over... 😁

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:03:

Speaking of digital cinema, I remember when one of our local theaters switched to digital projection--I believe it was around 1999 or 2000. They closed for a month and upgraded not only the projectors, but the sound as well. When they reopened, I watched Toy Story 2 and swear to god, that was the experience that inspired me to really get into home theater. I just wanted to recreate that experience at home.

I Remember this as well, I was told the reason was due to being a requirement to show Start Wars the Phantom Menace which I can believe as next town up also seemed to upgrade at the same time.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:03:

CDs and digital transports

I still don't understand this. How does equipment translate a bunch of 1's and 0's not only into individual instruments but the difference in sounds within that instrument?

Horun wrote on 2024-12-17, 04:04:

Another is like car self braking, self parallel parking (because we forgot/never learned how) self driving cars, etc is or will […]
Show full quote

Another is like car self braking, self parallel parking (because we forgot/never learned how)
self driving cars, etc is or will make us bad and unobservant drivers = dumber not smarter.
Or the smart cam in the frig because we are getting so dumb we cannot check what we need before we go shopping ? Really ?
Smart technology means you rely on someone or something else to make your life easier, once you become addicted to it, that makes you a slave to that technology and not a master of your own life.

Isn't that the point the Amish are trying to make?
My grandparents predate those newfangled washing machines.
My parents remember their first TV and been told watching too much was bad for you
I remember getting the internet and been told spending too much time was bad for you.

None of the above are technically required to survive but I'd struggle without them (well maybe not TV anymore)
I actually agree with you but it's hard to know where to draw the line, Not that it matters progress will continue if we like it or not

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-17, 05:55:

I still don't understand this. How does equipment translate a bunch of 1's and 0's not only into individual instruments but the difference in sounds within that instrument?

Wait till you see a ultrasound.

But seriously, the ones and zeroes describe a wave - just like in math class.

I'll be listing mainly games because that is what comes to me first...

Playing Ninja on my aunt and uncles Atari 130xe when it was already really old in probably 1990-1991... how was something so advanced possible? At home I was still playing Atari 2600...

We bought an SNES a bit late in its life cycle because we were poor, but I was absolutely blown away by the graphics and detailed music of Castlevania IV, which was the first game I saw on it.

Flashback on the SNES and Another world on the Genesis... not sure which one I played first but both were absolutely incredible visually, and the cinematics were a sign of things to come.

Seeing\hearing the demo playing of the original Doom shareware after my brother installed it on his new Packard Bell in ~1994-1995.

Quake (first time I saw it was 3D accelerated, running on a Sierra Scream'n 3D Rendition Verite 1000)

C&C: Red Alert - as a kid that played with little plastic army soldiers and tanks, being able to do this on a computer was a bit mind-melting... and going on the internet at a relative's house to download editors, bringing them home on floppy disks and editing the .ini files to change the gameplay and create new units... this felt like pure science fiction.

Daggerfall - not the graphics or sound... no no no... but seeing the size of the world and being able to go anywhere.

Star Wars Dark Forces 2 - Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith demos... got these from demo disks and they blew my mind with their realism and interactivity for the time.

Seeing Quake II demo 3D accelerated for the first time on a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI at twice the frame rate on my brother's Pentium 200 MMX compared to software mode on my 400Mhz PII... and the textures were smooth and there was the first colored lighting I had ever seen in 3D. Needless to say, I had a V3 2000 PCI of my own coming shortly after that and the computer hardware addiction had formally begun.

Vortex 2 A3D 2.0 demos... honestly never found a game that sounded quite as good as the demos, but those demos still blow my mind now. 😀

Half-Life had a few areas where the textures and lighting would trick my eye and it almost looked real... that was the first time this ever happened.

Quake III test - everything was just so... smooth and round and had so many polygons compared to previous games.

Outcast - The voxel scenery, the procedural animation, the weather effects, the bump mapped character textures, the realistic water... Seriously... this was the future, but no one knew it at the time, and there were no 3D accelerators that would have supported their vision. Easily 10+ years ahead of it's time if you could forgive the visual strangeness and low resolution (which I'm glad I did).

Morrowind's pixel shaded water on a Ti 4400

Red Faction PC demo - never bought the game actually, but the first time I blew a hole in the terrain it felt so surreal. From my earliest days of playing games I always liked to find and play with glitches, but in RF when I eventually tunneled from one place to some part of the level I wasn't supposed to be yet it felt like I had broken the universe.

Battlefield 1942 - similar to the C&C:RA feeling but being the one on the ground or in the vehicle was just crazy.

Flatout's amazing destructible environments that somehow functioned without being a slideshow (seriously... games were TERRIBLE with CPU resources at this time. For Flatout to do what it did and run so good seemed unreal.)

Half-Life 2's physics, super realistic graphics and insane production values

Portal - the portals... obviously.

... it all gets a bit foggy after this point, with lots of solid games but few moments that really blew my mind like they did in the past. I guess one could blame HL2 for that.

8800GTX... just ate everything I threw at it. Finally, graphics cards had caught up to the games!... wait... what's that over there?

Oh, hey, it's Crysis... 😑.... 😳

.... somewhere in here I got an i5 2500K, overclocked it and got my first SSD (64GB Crucial C300 for like $150)... and it finally felt like hardware had taken a huge leap. Sure enough, I would have very little reason to upgrade the CPU again for 8 whole years. Going back to the horribly optimized Elder Scrolls games and seeing them finally running smooth (ish) in cities was crazy.

Minecraft... I started playing in the Alpha days and watching the game evolve over time; the endless world; finding and building things... obviously this was a milestone and it was clear that it would effect the entire industry in profound ways.

Subnautica... hard to find the words for this one. The feeling of wonder in PC gaming was finally back after a very long hiatus. Still one of the greatest games of all time.

Teardown... Playing this game immediately sent me back to seeing the detailed voxel-world of Outcast, the pixel shaded water in Morrowind, the smooth and detailed destructable scenery in Flatout, the deformable terrain of Red Faction. What this game manages to pull off was jaw dropping for me.

Things worth mentioning out of order:

Broadband internet

120Hz backlight-strobed LCDs

OLED displays

Nintendo DS Lite (...what? when I got it I hadn't used a handheld electronic device for gaming since the original fat Gameboy and the Atari Lynx...)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-12-17, 07:33:

Seeing Quake II demo 3D accelerated for the first time on a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI at twice the frame rate on my brother's Pentium 200 MMX compared to software mode on my 400Mhz PII... and the textures were smooth and there was the first colored lighting I had ever seen in 3D. Needless to say, I had a V3 2000 PCI of my own coming shortly after that and the computer hardware addiction had formally begun.

This reminds me of the time when I got my first 3D accelerator card - a lowly Trident Blade 3D. But even with that slowpoke, I was absolutely blown away with how Quake 2 looked when running in OpenGL mode.

As you say, the colored lighting was spectacular for the time, and greatly enhanced the game's atmosphere. But what impressed me even more was that firing a blaster (the first weapon) produced a glowing plasma bolt that would illuminate nearby walls and floors as it flew past them. That feature was of course missing in the software rendering mode, which is how I had experienced the game previously, so I was completely blown away.

When I first saw a printout come from a laser printer. Prior to that I'd used only dot matrix printers and plotters. Too see a page come out so quickly, quietly and perfectly crisp was absolutely incredible to me.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-17, 18:49:

When I first saw a printout come from a laser printer. Prior to that I'd used only dot matrix printers and plotters. Too see a page come out so quickly, quietly and perfectly crisp was absolutely incredible to me.

I still feel that way. I bought my first laser printer about 10 years ago and have never missed not having color. If I do ever need color, I'll go somewhere to have it printed. I think I've only ever done this twice since switching over.

I've saved hundreds of dollars in ink by using toner toner instead. Absolutely worth it.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-17, 18:49:

When I first saw a printout come from a laser printer. Prior to that I'd used only dot matrix printers and plotters. Too see a page come out so quickly, quietly and perfectly crisp was absolutely incredible to me.

I somehow got it backwards, I met Laser Printers earlyish, well for desktop/SOHO sized ones, and you still had to worry about font cartridges, installed RAM and what page description language your application spoke. So while I saw some output as good as nice daisywheel, pure graphic prints were pretty simple, limited by source image quality and often dithered badly. But I met good bubblejet/inkjet after it was somewhat mature, and got impressed first by that instead. Though not long after there were better (Probably now affordable) laser printers where you got full graphic and LQ so it looked like a page from a glossy textbook. Anyway, being an impoverished student at this juncture, I picked up a used and several year old inkjet, which was of the Kodak Diconix type, and I don't know if it was a bit worn, but the print wavered slightly in the letter. Anyway, quality of that one was only kinda "best you could expect from a 24pin Dot Matrix, except the paper wasn't hammered to death where it was dense or dark" so mildly whelming upgrade from 9 pin DMP. Anyhoo... couple more years passed before I had hands on a "good" bubblejet, a Canon. Though I remained envious of those HP 500 series. But these days it's 1990-2005 laserjets or nothing, everything else is trash 😜

We had a dotmatrix printer at home when I was growing up that was capable of printing graphics with dithered dots. I was very used to waiting for the print and enjoyed watching it spool out. The only thing I really hated about it was tearing away those stupid perforated holes. It was very tedious and always sucked whenever I accidently tore the page trying to get them off.

Our accounting department had them and we had special folders to put them in and at the end of the tax year we had to remove them from the folder with special ties for storage archiving

For me, futuristic moments were always in networking:

GeoCities homepages in the 1990s
Everyone could publish and global communications were not limited anymore to text/CLIs but colorful online documents

Domain registrations in the 1990s
Not a technology per se but the wide-scale availability of domain names for everyone to publish or put content online

DSL
High-speed and affordable digital uplinks at home after years of struggling with analog dial-up

Wireless comms + shared storage
A combination of wireless networking (WiFi, UMTS) and shared network storage (ZFS, SMB) that could be accessed "anywhere"

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-18, 03:59:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-17, 18:49:

When I first saw a printout come from a laser printer. Prior to that I'd used only dot matrix printers and plotters. Too see a page come out so quickly, quietly and perfectly crisp was absolutely incredible to me.

I somehow got it backwards, I met Laser Printers earlyish, well for desktop/SOHO sized ones, and you still had to worry about font cartridges, installed RAM and what page description language your application spoke. So while I saw some output as good as nice daisywheel, pure graphic prints were pretty simple, limited by source image quality and often dithered badly. But I met good bubblejet/inkjet after it was somewhat mature, and got impressed first by that instead. Though not long after there were better (Probably now affordable) laser printers where you got full graphic and LQ so it looked like a page from a glossy textbook. Anyway, being an impoverished student at this juncture, I picked up a used and several year old inkjet, which was of the Kodak Diconix type, and I don't know if it was a bit worn, but the print wavered slightly in the letter. Anyway, quality of that one was only kinda "best you could expect from a 24pin Dot Matrix, except the paper wasn't hammered to death where it was dense or dark" so mildly whelming upgrade from 9 pin DMP. Anyhoo... couple more years passed before I had hands on a "good" bubblejet, a Canon. Though I remained envious of those HP 500 series. But these days it's 1990-2005 laserjets or nothing, everything else is trash 😜

My 100 CAN$ Canon MF3010 thet I bought brand new last Summer, to replace a dead LaserJet 3050 that lasted over 15 years, is great.

Being able to buy a brand new printer scanner combo, that appears to be quite reliable (model was launched years ago and no significant complaints, AFAICT) this cheap was great.

Easily (a few hours, one day) getting it set up to print with pretty much any OS launched in the last 25ish years was great too.

Getting both the printer and scanner to seamlessly and reliably work over the network (this printer only has USB connectivity) as well was even better.

To do this, a Linux VM (QEMU KVM with PCI passthrough of a USB host controller) leveraging CUPS, Ghostscript, SANE, etc was all that needed to be set up (I do also use a SANE to TWAIN to bridge on Windows clients).

That a home user has access to all that software functionality, to the documentation to set use it up and
all at practically no cost (FOSS) is really the most awesome part. The cheapness and availability of usable hardware (second hand PCs, SBCs like the Pi, etc) helps too.

Many things suck about the modern world but, IMHO, these are exceptions. This part of the "future" having arrived, I do like.

EDIT: I also did stock up on third party toner which works great and was inexpensive.