Was? Why did you stop? I'm a still a fan. I still watch top ranked demos posted on http://pouet.net on weekends. Yes, they aren't good as the old days, but still fun.

there is a multi part series of the demoscene? Awesome! Softsubs look good, not google translated crap. I was such a big fan of the pc demo scene, it was the driving force behind my drive to get better audio components for my pc.

Probably good for demos. Play it normal, then turn it off to FRAPS the demo.

Seems to me the audience is easily amused, cheering for the most trivial things. Guess maybe I just expect more from a "game" that's more than 4 years past its last Kickstarter milestone having not met a single one last I checked. But then, I lost interest in this tech demo a long time ago, when they overpromised and started focusing on ship jpegs and pushing deadlines instead of actually meeting any of their promises.

I funny the broader furor about this game hilarious. Developer previews game without showing any meaningful gameplay, progression or storyline. Then people are shocked, shocked the game contains none of these things. This train wreck was predictable as hell, right down to the committed fanboys digging in their heels. I hope this is featured as a tech demo on the latest 3DMark.

There are systems other than democracy which have the kind of cheques and a balances you are referring to.

Just that not all of them place that power indiscriminately in the hands of the demos. e.g. a Meritocratic system expects its voters to earn their votes by demonstrating competence in a given field (those qualified in healthcare can vote to choose administrators of health etc.)

Democracy as we know it is a deeply unsophisticated way of attending to the problems you describe. There are alternatives that may well prove better, were we to actually try them.

It's pretty clear actual unlimited democracy doesn't work as no country in the modern world uses it. So it appears it's only the recourse to peaceful regime change that's important here, not necessarily the means by which it is achieved.

But even then, that blow off valve is usually defined in pretty narrow parameters and the political landscape carefully maintained by societies elites. Were it not, the aforementioned repeal of the death penalty and such would likely have doomed the ruling regime to be replaced by something more representative of the demos's backwards attitudes.

Hell I could even conceive of ways to just apply enough of that same veneer of democratic accountability to Sophocracy, technocracy and Noocracy, without resorting to a full blown meritocracy or oligarchy. One need only define the parameters that limit the demos in a way which demands leadership candidates have requisite qualities/qualifications.

It really could be very similar to what we have now, but with the parameters shifted to define a different sort of viable candidate.

It's already a hybrid of elite and demos, just redefine the elite and let the demos keep the blow off valve within the new parameters.

And then one day in the future perhaps, leaders will not always have to be emotionally flawed humans?

Will it? Or might the ignorant heard instead frequently shit all over something that lies beyond their own foresight, self interest and/or ill considered sensibilities?

By way of example, the abolition of the death penalty was opposed by the majority population in the UK up until about 2015 (it was introduced in 1965)

Likewise with equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery, child labour and so on (though I don't have numbers/dates for those to hand).

I realise the question of democracy is more nuanced than that, but there are enough examples of progress despite popular opinion to seriously call it into question.

I just can't help but shake the notion that the most successful and free democratic societies tend to be those most limited by political elites within them. (this can of course work both ways)

I will agree however that the illusion of democracy certainly seems to do wonders for keeping the baying pitchforks at bay.

A cycle of violent revolution does not seem at all preferable I agree. Clearly we are going to need a bit of both, a meritocratically regulated Noo perhaps? (i.e. earned but readily accessible votes for the demos to influence an elite Noo)

Though of course the problems with establishing that are also legion. I suspect that ultimately unless/until we create a mind greater than our own (A.I. or somesuch), it's always going to be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I don't think the systems are usually the real problem. I think it's just that people as groups are bloody awful.

All hail the mighty Noosphere!

Edit: I'm using Noo here to refer to the higher functions of the hypothetical collective brain. Strictly speaking everyone is part of the theoretical Noo and the anticipated harmony which it would/could grow into.

and another video about the vacuum failure demo he set up:
https://youtu.be/YIVJvpNyjdc

It's not a huge collection. Mainly 12" remixes and a few promotional ones. My treasure is three U2 4pack 7" vinyl. Consisting of early demos from "Boy" to my fav "The Unforgetable Fire". I have only seen one one eBay. A few of the tracks have never been offered on digital or on cd format. You are welcome. Post some more music. They never get many votes. I enjoy sharing music and always crave new sound.

Demo is all right, we really don't see anything we haven't seen before. Pretty much the onlything we havn't seen is mass scale destruction. Heck even small scale is so-so, mainly because of 2 things. #1 you really need a chunk of processing time for convincing physics calculation of a good amount of debris (We still don't see the level of particle effects the old AGEIA PPU demo's had) and #2 realistic enough fire effects. #1 is at least possible with tech that we have today, but #2 requires that someone actually create the effect for use in games.

Fire as you may have gathered, is probably the most difficult CG effect to create. Hollywood took 20 years after CGI effects started in movies before it actually didn't look fake. Today fire in CG is very manageable, but before that it just made more sense to record your fire on a matte backdrop and insert the footage over one of the final rendering passes of your 3d project.

The short answer is "It depends!"

I know it's a crappy answer, but there are way too many parameters at play. There are many games today that have scripted scenes in them that are pretty cinematic. Think of GTA III, from 2001. The cut scenes in that game still outshine the actual gameplay of GTA V today.

If the scene is scripted, then all the animation, and camera movement can be fine tuned and all compute resources are pooled into the viewport of the camera. This allows the artists to focus all of the trickery on the shot itself, but not the rest of the world. From a PVS or scene-graph stand point, you have pretty much reduced the complexity to just what you are seeing.

I do not know how they made this demo and cannot comment on it with any authoritative capital. I've written 3D engines before (not for videogames though) and can comment on the technology I think I'm seeing here. My comments are just an opinion based on what I know. I do not have access to Unity and have never used it before. But here it goes:

For a scene like this, there should be reduced/canned computation in:

• Collision detection and response
  
• AI
  
• Animation / IK
  
• PVS
  
• Texture Atlasing
  

The shaders, unless they are geometry (the ripping of the skin/flesh in the Adam scene) could or could not be reduced in scope and complexity. I am not sure if they are scripted or dynamic. By scripted, I mean a geometry shader that reads vertex data from a VBO stream or some memory buffer instead of computing the vertices on the fly. It's still real-time, just not dynamic.

Most of the graphics you see here are standard applications of technology that's been around for a while:

• PBR shader
  
• Motion Blur Shader
  
• Depth of Field Shader
  
• Cascaded Shadow Maps Shader
  

The particle system seems pretty standard as well.

This is a great demo and I am extremely impressed with the art direction, but the engine itself is, after all, Unity with PBR for the characters, and maybe Global Illumation for the indoor scenes, which I believe they licensed from Geomerics.

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How far behind do the playable game graphics tend to trail behind the demos?

Feels like it's about 2 years.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy demos, because I know that one day soon I'll get to play games with that level of graphics.

If this is a game, I'd buy it.
If this is a movie, I'd rent it.
If this is a tech demo, I'd demand they make a game or a movie from it. This is an interesting universe.

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