Vector Graphics
Lines of light
A vector monitor draws lines by steering the beam, not by scanning pixels. Cinematronics' Space Wars brought it to arcades in 1978, Atari's Quadrascan games made it famous, Sega's Space Fury added colour, and the Vectrex took it home.
A vector display draws with the electron beam directly: the game steers the beam from point to point across the phosphor, switching it on for the lines it wants, instead of scanning the whole screen row by row and lighting pixels. Lines come out sharp at any angle, objects can sit anywhere and move at any speed, and a wireframe 3D scene costs only its edges. The arcade era of the technique runs from Cinematronics’ Space Wars in 1978 through Atari’s Asteroids, Battlezone, Tempest and Star Wars; the one home machine built around it was the Vectrex.
Fast facts
- First in the arcades: Space Wars (Cinematronics, 1978), “which premiered vector graphics in videogames”; its creator Larry Rosenthal “is widely credited with having invented vector graphics” (Electronic Games, 1983-84).
- Atari’s name for it: Quadrascan, “essentially the same system, but the name is trademarked for use exclusively by Atari”.
- Colour: Sega’s Space Fury (1981) — before it, “game players were either playing vector games in black & white, or vector games with a colored plastic overlay on the screen”; Tempest was “Atari’s first vector graphics system videogame in color” (1982).
- At home: the Vectrex (GCE, 1982), “the first vector graphics monitor in the entire home arcade field”.
How it differs from raster
A raster monitor paints every line of the screen every frame whether or not anything is there; the picture is a grid of dots. A vector monitor has deflection amplifiers the game drives directly, and a display list of moves and draws replaces the frame buffer. Electronic Games explained it to readers in 1981 as “the difference between a connect-the-dots puzzle and the smooth lines of an etch-a-sketch”, and noted the second consequence: Quadrascan “makes it possible for objects to drift onto the screen from any direction and at variable speeds” — no pixel steps, no sprite grid.
The costs follow from the same design. Nothing can be filled, so “it’s just about impossible to produce real-looking images due to the lack of shading, and large areas are often left empty of detail”. The beam has to retrace every line every refresh, so a busy screen takes longer to draw and dims or flickers. And the monitor is “a specially-built, ‘intelligent’ monitor” rather than a television: “vector’s biggest drawback is its considerable cost, at least in arcade machines”.
Arcade history
Electronic Games told the story in 1984. Cinematronics’ Space Wars (1978), a coin-op version of the 1962 MIT Spacewar!, introduced the technology and “ushered in a new set of controls, like the thrust and fire modes and the ever-popular hyperspace option”. The company “later went great-guns into vector graphics games”, with Starhawk and Tailgunner, “the first 3-D first-person videogame”.
Atari followed in 1979 with Lunar Lander, “Atari’s most talked-about game, at least partly because of its novel vector graphics”, and then, “when fans clamored for more”, Asteroids, “the most talked-about vector-graphics game of all time”. Battlezone and Red Baron put the same display to first-person use — Quadrascan “creates images as three-dimensional, crystaline objects, detailed schematic line drawings of reality”.
Colour came from Sega’s Space Fury in 1981, though Sega’s own output stayed “five to one” raster; Atari’s colour vector debut was Tempest, “the most visually striking coin-op around” in 1982. By 1984 Star Wars was “one of the hotter games gobbling tokens right now”, but the magazine already thought “the future of vector is unpredictable” with laserdisc games arriving. Its list of the best vector games named Atari’s Asteroids, Battlezone, Star Wars and Tempest; Bally/Midway’s Omega Race; Cinematronics’ Star Hawk and Tailgunner; Sega’s Space Fury and Star Trek; and five Vectrex cartridges.
The Vectrex
GCE’s 1982 console was the only home machine with a vector monitor built in — “delicately etched line drawings in brilliant black and white”, with “a very pronounced three-dimensional perspective that is especially effective in the outer space games”. Coloured plastic overlays did what the arcade overlays had done before Space Fury. Within two years Electronic Games judged that “technology has caught up to the Vectrex”.