I haven't played for a couple decades but never used minis when we did, occasionally the DM would arrange some dice if we needed some visual aides but was never measuring distances and hex grids or anything. Some of us even played wh40k at the time so it wasn't that unknown, we just never played tabletop RPGs like tactical games. It was also 2nd Edition not even third, so awhile back. Shadowrun games needed the visual aids more than DnD usually.