[From Vox; follow the link at the end for a full-size infographic. Many videos that illustrate the evolution are available on YouTube, including the 1:45 minute ‘moving line-up’ one here and the 16:45 minute one with gameplay and sound here]

How Lara Croft’s changing face illustrates Moore’s law

By Timothy B. Lee on February 1, 2015

Lara Croft is one of the most recognizable female characters in video gaming, having starred in a dozen editions of Tomb Raider since the series debuted in 1996. And that makes her a perfect window into the rapid pace of progress in 3D graphics over the last two decades.

At the left is the Lara Croft character as she appeared in the original 1996 game. On the right is Croft as she appeared in 2014’s Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition.

The increasing realism is a reflection of Moore’s law, which holds that the amount of computing power per chip doubles every couple of years. Video games represent 3D scenes as a sequence of polygons; the more computing power you have, the more polygons you can render. The original Lara Croft was rendered with a few hundred polygons. The latest models use tens of thousands, producing images that look almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

See more images of Lara Croft’s evolution here.