Back when I graduated I was still holding my breath for the patent expiration on marching cubes, GPUs were still being made for PCI and even ISA slots, you could find some game engines but you would have a better time writing one specialized for the type of game or graphics you were targeting.
sounds like it, my first computer was an Atari 800 XL that shared the family TV as its monitor (and fortunately there was an RF switch to toggle between it and the antenna so we worked out a kind of timesharing system)
Nowadays it is a check box on a game engine, one of many.
People don't imagine how good they have it with modern engines.
Not to take any value out of this work, this is a great achievement and kudos to the author, only making the point how good we have nowadays.