*promote sifter skills.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 5:58am PDT - promote requested by original submitter Hybrid.

Wow, Demo comps are still going on? I used to love these things back in the '90s when they were pushing the limits of pre-hardware-accelerated graphics.

They are still pushing. And I'm sorry that you missed the glorious demo years of the 2000s
I, sadly, lost a bit of an interest when my computer could no longer handle the processing needs of demos a year ago.
>> ^VidRoth:

Wow, Demo comps are still going on? I used to love these things back in the '90s when they were pushing the limits of pre-hardware-accelerated graphics.

Yeah, some of them are very gpu and or CPU bound - Fairlights particle based rendering in particular are a strain on most systems - but to be fair most demos are designed to work with medium hardware - the trick is getting a lot out of it without resorting to 8 CPUs 3 GPUs and a tonne of memory

(this demo runs just fine on a 260GTX for example - this demo is GPU heavy)

most of the time the demos will run just fine without you needing up to date HW etc

DirectX10 is what we use (it, amongst other things has less dependancy issues than DX9)

you should definitely have a look at some of the newer stuff from last year and this year, so good demos

>> ^TheGenk:

They are still pushing. And I'm sorry that you missed the glorious demo years of the 2000s
I, sadly, lost a bit of an interest when my computer could no longer handle the processing needs of demos a year ago.
>> ^VidRoth:
Wow, Demo comps are still going on? I used to love these things back in the '90s when they were pushing the limits of pre-hardware-accelerated graphics.

I don't get it.

@Zonbie: Yeah, some Demos still run on my PC, but the majority won't. Only got a Radeon HD 2900 XT *sad panda*

awesome!

The first and last parts definitely shows that real time has reached 'production' quality. That could easily be one of those abstract intros to music or news shows that you see.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

I don't get it.


If you haven't been exposed to the demo scene and just see a video then I can understand why people wouldn't get it. You have to bear in mind that what's in the video can also be rendered in real time on existing (usually consumer) hardware.

The demo scene consists of coders, artists and composers who try their best to get computers to do as much as possible with as little as possible. In this example they have free reign over pc hardware; but you'll also find demos for older, self contained machines (Amigas, Ataris, Gameboys, iPhones; even calculators). You'll also find demos for self imposed limitations, such as writing the demo as a program that fits into a limited space such as 256kb, 64kb, 1kb and all the way down to an insane 32 bytes.

The techniques used, such as data compression; procedural content generation; and streaming can be influential on other real time software such as video games.

The programs that they produce (often known as Products or prods) also have to be visually interesting. Parties are often held where the coders and artists come together and demonstrate their work to each other. This leads to some competition; and/or sharing of ideas and techniques. The teams also often create these things at the parties themselves; creating prods in only a couple of days; and often with alcohol involved.

An aspect of this whole scene that I find interesting is that in order for the participants to actually achieve this stuff they inevitably have to produce content; which means they need an art direction. This has lead to a subculture of visual and audio styles that you perhaps wouldn't otherwise have found elsewhere; especially with the unique limitations.

Nowadays the styles that have come about in the demo scene have very much influenced mainstream culture; from music and music videos; to advertising; to movie and tv titles; and print.

Edit: If you're interested and want to see more; try out pouet.net.

*shameless promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 8:59am PDT - promote requested by Zonbie.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

I don't get it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5CTFMuFvb0
Watch this. It is the winner of Breakpoint 2009 4kb PC Demo
Found it on the sift:
http://videosift.com/video/Elevated-Procedural-realtime-terrain-demo

*doublepromote the effing awesome

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 4:08pm PDT - doublepromote requested by deathcow.