Virtua Fighter 3

Virtua Fighter 3 (arcade)  1996

Advanced 3D fighting game - more detailed graphics, first trilinear interpolation, first high specular gouraud shading, first specular reflection, first alpha blending, first micro texture shading, first pin-point light, first motion blur effects in certain moves, characters' eyes now appeared to track the opponent's position, their muscles could flex and relax, the fighting arenas featured stairs and slopes, advanced anti-aliasing, first cloth physics (soft body physics)

Arcade system: Sega Model 3 Step 1.0

Gameplay video

Earliest Magazine preview - Computer and video games (1996)

Magazine review - Computer and video games (1996)

Trivia:
1) Computer and Video Games described the game's demo, unveiled in early March 1996, as "the most astounding display of video game graphic muscle ever in the history of this industry."
2) At the Japanese AOU show on February 21, 1996, Sega displayed non-playable demos of Lau Chan, Dural, and new character Aoi Umenokoji, who was unveiled for the first time at the show. However, Dural, the robotic woman final boss, garnered the most attention, due to being made of a metallic surface that reflected the surrounding environment.

3) Game had advanced anti-aliasing (anti-aliasing was first featured in Magic Carpet (1994).

4) Trilinear interpolation is a method of multivariate interpolation on a 3-dimensional regular grid. It approximates the value of an intermediate point (x, y, z) within the local axial rectangular prism linearly, using data on the lattice points.

5) Specular reflection is the mirror-like reflection of light (or of other kinds of wave) from a surface, in which light from a single incoming direction (a ray) is reflected into a single outgoing direction.

6) Alpha compositing (blending) is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency.

7) Motion blur - A post processing effect that blurs and streaks the entire frame. Loosely based on the behavior of real-world optics.

8) Sega Saturn version is unreleased, because of Saturn hardware was to week for conversion.

9) Emulated in: Supermodel (not fully emulated).

10) Cloth physics (Soft body physics) - physics system, which uses "soft body." Soft body is anything in the environment that is not solid - curtains and flags, ropes and spiderwebs, plastic doors. It participates to the feeling of total immersion. Allows the realistic movement of curtainlike objects which is improved by adding environment mapping to them (if you run through a curtain, it will react differently than when you creep through This interaction also creates its own unique shadows).

11) Other earliest games that use same physics is - Nocturne (1999) (cloth physics to simulate the main character's coat, among other things), Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) (interactive cloth banners that react to player collision believably in the Lee Hong Assassination mission), Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell used advanced soft body physics.