[Redfern]

Let's not forget "The Wrath of Khan". True, the overall film wasn't CGI, just the now iconic "Genesis Simulation", but what it presented seemed a bit more sophisticated than the phong shaded objects in Tron. It presented "particle" effects (the missile striking the dead planet and the wave of "fire" sweeping across it), "texture" and "bump" mapping to present the cratered surface, and morphing "fractals" as the surface was reshaped once the wave had passed.

But wasn't a vector line simulation created as early as the 1960s? I saw a clip not terribly long ago showing a wireframe "paper airplane" soaring through an office type interior, the objects of that environment also represented as edge lines. I could be mistaken, of course, but I seem to remember the date being "1960 something".

Based on the same idea was the tactical simulation of the DeathStar "trench run". I watched another clip demonstrating how that was constructed. The modeler had a control board with dials he (or she) rotated to connect vector lines just to build the simplest of box shapes.

If I can find those clips I'll post the links.

Sincerely,

Bill