Which... is also in the article.

You're correct, I was hasty and didn't read it thoroughly enough before posting.

It's a relatively recent convention though. Isometric means "equal measurement". The measurement along each axis has nothing necissarily to do with angles.

The only difference is if you "stack" tiles vertically they slightly offset in 2d space from ones that are offset 1x+1y.

i would say calling this projection isometric is 'a relatively recent error'

in an isometric projection all the edges of an axis-aligned cube are the same length. in the axonometric projection discussed here, which is dimetric rather than isometric, the vertical edges are of length 1 while the horizontal edges are of length √(1 + ½²) ≈ 1.118

is the fact that this projection is not isometric the reason zaxxon was called zaxxon and not zisom?

The horizontal edges are clearly measurable. The vertical (z) axis you are making a requirement that it has to show directly on top of a tile 1X and 1Y offset. That's on you.

?

i have no idea what you intended to say here

+1, that was essentially motivated because that allowed you to have power of 2s for your tiles, e.g. 64x32

That is a really clever hack. Who first used it?

It’s not really a hack, it’s more the obvious implementation when you’re doing any pixel art.

It's been widely used since the 80s or 90s - just kind of a clean way of doing it, as the other choices are not as pleasing, visually. Although, e.g. Ultima Online went with 1:1 military perspective, which looks pretty skewed in some ways.

since 01981 i think

> The use of isometric graphics in video games began with Data East's DECO Cassette System arcade game Treasure Island,[6] released in Japan in September 1981,[7] but it was not released internationally until June 1982.[8] The first isometric game to be released internationally was Sega's Zaxxon, which was significantly more popular and influential;[9][10] it was released in Japan in December 1981[11] and internationally in April 1982.[8] Zaxxon is an isometric shooter where the player flies a space plane through scrolling levels. It is also one of the first video games to display shadows.[9]

(...)

> In 1983, isometric games were no longer exclusive to the arcade market and also entered home computers, with the release of Blue Max for the Atari 8-bit computers and Ant Attack for the ZX Spectrum. In Ant Attack, the player can move forward in any direction of the scrolling game, offering complete free movement rather than fixed to one axis as with Zaxxon.

Somewhere in storage I have a Colecovision and a copy of Zaxxon for it. The graphics in that game feel absolutely mind blowing for the era.

AFAIK https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Lore was among the first isometric 3D games, and it used this ratio.