Watch the evolution of real-time graphics since 2000

YouTube user Perfect Hand Productions has pieced together a painstaking compilation of GPU demos and third-party benchmarks from 2000 to the present day, illustrating just how far real-time graphics have evolved.

The two-hour video presents the material in chronological order, beginning with Nvidia’s Grove demo and ending with recent benchmarks such as Catzilla.

Caveats apply: there are no AMD demos included, and there are one or two other glitches and omissions, explained in the comments on the YouTube page.

But if you remember these demos from the time, it’s a fascinating – and slightly uncomfortable – experience. Some of this stuff looked amazing a decade ago. It looks embarrassingly primitive now.