Quoted from greg Didn't ID4 win an Oscar for its effects?

"Independence Day – Volker Engel, Douglas Smith, Clay Pinney and Joseph Viskocil.

Dragonheart – Scott Squires, Phil Tippett, James Straus and Kit West.

Twister – Stefen Fangmeier, John Frazier, Habib Zargarpour and Henry La Bounta."

You have to admit that the competition wasn't too difficult. Twister's was weak, then, too...

EDIT: Had it been '97, I don't quite think ID4 would've won.

"Titanic – Robert Legato, Mark A. Lasoff, Thomas L. Fisher and Michael Kanfer.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park – Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Randal Dutra and Michael Lantieri.

Starship Troopers – Phil Tippett, Scott Anderson, Alec Gillis and John Richardson."

Cameron, Spielberg and Verhoeven. Tough 3-way, or at least 2. =)

EDIT 2: Titanic's visuals aren't really holding up too well, either, now that I think about it. Shame.

Looking back it's not really stiff competition, but at the time those interior shots of tornadoes were pretty impressive.  At least for my 10 year old self they were =)

That is true. It's just fun to look back at old movies' visual effects as compared to today. One of my favorites is "War of the Worlds", the original. They were amazing and scary (I've heard, I don't know for certain because I was nowhere near alive then) and you look at it nowadays and almost have to laugh, but you think that once, they were great.