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The Art of the Tech Demo
Alan writes "A lot of people underestimate the significance of a good technology demo. A good tech demo can be more important for a GPU product launch than even benchmarks. However, this means more than just pretty graphics or complex shaders. In my final article to the industry, I explain what the art of the tech demo is all about.
"
We've been doing it for years..
http://www.scene.org
...there actually used to be a demo scene which really turned out some amazing stuff. My favorite demo group of all was the Future Crew, and Second Reality did some really pretty neat stuff on some pretty mediocre hardware. Though, the VLB card I ended up getting sped up significant portions of some of the more intensive portions of the demos (i.e. the concentric rings in Second Reality).
:)
I used to leave it running in a loop at work so we could sell more computers.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
One of the demos they go over in the article is the Animusic demo for ATI's Radeon 9700.
That was one of the cooler demos I've seen. The graphics aren't that special but paired with the sound the scene comes alive.
... In my industry, demo's (or, more appropriately, demo songs) have been a staple part of the released product for years.
... because musicians will often hear a 'demo song' and think to themselves "sounds great, but I could do better", and the moment someone is thinking that about a song on your product (in my business), you're closer to a sale.
...
...
Okay, demo songs for synthesizers are not often the 'best' example of what the synth can do. But this is also a good thing, sometimes
IF the demo is interesting enough 'sounding' to get their attention, but turns out to be pretty 'uninspired' as a song, then this leads the musician/customer to think 'okay, great capabilities, poor execution in the track, I'll take it and see what I can do better'
Its been known for a long time that a demo need not be 'superlative', just "demonstrative of the technology you're trying to sell", and not much else. When was the last time you heard a "Hit Demo Song" coming from a synth? But, I'll bet you anything that the demo songs on most modern synth gear these days contain factory patches that you'll recognize as sounds in popular songs, and no matter how cheesy the track is, if it somehow shows you what is 'possible' with the hardware, even if its naff, then you're closer to a sale
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
it's more like: 1. hey, wouldn't it be cool to..... 2. ??? 3. Profit. i wish i knew what 2 is ;)
Yup. I can attest to that. Being part of a GPU design team myself.
If only we hadn't have used the goatse man as part of our tech presentation on the big night, we might still be around.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
...Boobs! - They seem to be rather obvious to show off high polycount and advanced shading techniques. Furthermore they are also a good place to show off your great dynamic-body-physics-engine(TM).
... insert more good reasons to show boobs in tech demos here...
A very successful integrated solution salesman, with whom I once had the pleasure of working, had a very relevant quote for here:
"Do a demo, lose a sale."
The deeper explanation is that so many salespeople come to call with "gadgety" demos and slides. The really successful salesperson LISTENS to a customer's problems and tries to work out a solution in common.
Have you Meta Moderated t
I agree , I have seen many impressive demos ( in various formats and guises) , but I thought it was just the fact that im older now , that that wow , almost wet myself it was so good feeling was not there anymore, looking back on some of the things I thought where great back in the day (1989) , granted they have lost there wow factor now , but nothing these days comes close, SGI used to be really good at the wow factor
In the end, many people go with the brand-name they prefer and that's where the tech demo comes in.
Many people are also like me who just look to see who has the best Linux drivers. (nvidia, for those wondering)
Do you have ESP?
yeah it is truly amazing how much the tech demos have been progressing in the past few years, I just recently watched an NVidia demo that was just a few months old and compared to the new one for the 6800 series it looked awful, you could see a big difference, we're definitely progressing *remembers seeing an article about how some gpus have more transistors than a decent processor*
You must be new here. You act as if any of this is news.
Its the naked pixies that influence my GPU purchases. If I am going to drop $500.00 on the latest GPU it better have a naked pixie tech demo. Errr wait didn't NVIDIA try that . . .it didn't make me buy their leaf blower GPU. (remote power station not included - see store for details)
Is how to rig it, of course. To misquote a phrase, any sufficiently advanced technology can be simulated by a rigged demo :-)
I think the importance of tech demoes have diminished greatly in recent years, when cards have had more or less the same capabilities (not speed, maybe) anyways. I mean, a DX9 tech demo is theoretically able to run on any card that can "do" DX9.
:).
Also, when it comes to bragging rights, "prettier tech demo!" just doesn't work on most people. Intangibles like frame rate and features are what people can easily point to.
That's not to say GPU tech demoes are worthless - but in comparison to other stuff, they've had their day in the sun. Fortunately, I predict a long life for them on consoles
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Bears, balls, tits and ass. All good tech demos speak to this reality.
In the absence of Sludge Vohaul's phone number, developing a good demo is the best choice.
Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.e mo/ is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_706/www.firingsquad .com/features/art_of_tech_demo/
The mirror of http://www.firingsquad.com/features/art_of_tech_d
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
The tech demo is how Sony PlayStation 2 was able to stifle the Sega Dreamcast despite platform parity early on.
I think in this case the author is exaggerating the importance of tech demos. I wonder what % of Dreamcast or PlayStation 2 owners have actually seen either of the two tech demos? I think the simple fact that the PS2 was backwardly compatible was much more significant then some stupid tech demo
Most of what the article talks about can be applied in everyday working life.
If you want support for your project, you have to have some kind of demo early on. The boss is much more likely to fund your project if you give him something he can 'play' with. It could be a proof of concept experiment or it could be the GUI of a user app. Some kind of demo is MUCH more convincing that any amount of 'pie in the sky' powerpoint presentations. It's the difference in saying "This works, we can make a pile of money." vs. "This SHOULD work, we MIGHT be able to make a pile of money."
This also applies to getting help for open source projects. People are much more willing to contribute if you give something that works at least minimally to play with.
"In Search of Excellence" by Peters and Waterman gives pretty good detail on how this works. (But I can't give quotes 'cause my dog ate my copy!)
10% content 90% adverts/fluff
you could of put that entire article on 1 page, but no, lets split it up into 20*50 word chunks, scatter a few 150x150px screenshots and voilá, you have a content:noncontent ratio that makes print magazines look like encylopedias
boobs... it goes much further than that. boobs are _always_ useful in any kind of advertising or trying to get attention. it's the one thing that always, always works. has for thousands of years.
no matter what the product: slap some boobs on the front, and it sells.
it's not for nothing that bay watch is (still!) the most watched TV show on the planet.
...comes with Debian. Install the "bb" package.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
id software has also been doing tech demos for years.
The only difference is that other companies wind up making actual games with their licensed technology.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The article starts off nicely with:
:-)
Most people here would agree that ATI's latest technology demo, 'The Doublecross' starring their new mascot Ruby (Download the video here) is superbly done.
including a screenshot from said demo. I particularly like the way you can see the scenery behind the girl through her mouth.
I suppose 'superbly' applies to either the realistic look on the girls face, when apparently the back of her head is missing, or that she must have a display in her mouth that displays what's recorded by a camera on the back of her head.
Either way, very impressive!
Just kidding!
All my decent Video cards since the days of my 486 have been NVIDA, and even though ive never had a top or even high end card at the time i bought it, from the frount page of the artical the only ATI demo i can rember seeing or hearing about is Animusic.
Perhpas the lack of seeing ATI demos in stores
and videos of them flaoting the net played a part in my choice of video card.
A bit like a shareware or demo,
try before you buy.
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I don't know what the videocard industry is thinking sometimes. Maybe instead of sinking so many hours of coder time in creating these pretty bits of eye candy for each new product release, they should assign some more resources to the development and QA testing of the actual drivers.
I dunno about you, but I think the last time I bought a video card that came with a rock-solidly stable video driver was the VGA card that came with my 386. For every card since, it seems like it's been a buggy, 90% functional driver at release, an update to 95% functionality and fewer bugs three or four months later, and then no further driver releases as the driver teams have all moved on to the next bleeding-edge chipset.
DVD version.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
HAHAHAHAHA!
No way. To run MY demos you typically needed to have a GUS, VBE2.0 with a 320x200x32bpp mode (preferably on the right number as well) and a right class of CPU.
Before that it was even worse. I used to do lots of tweakmode stuff etc, just to get the effect to run in a frame on my machine and used hardware tricks to do a wide range of 'impossible' things. If this isn't showing off specific hardware, then I don't know what is. Unfortunately, these didn't become incredibly popular. I wonder why..
These days it's a bit different. I couldn't care less about pixel shaders and other crap until they become both mainstream and standardized. (DX doesn't count for the latter)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a tech demo."
In summary, boobs make *everything* better.
Get off my lawn.
in chapter 6 of proudly serving my corporate masters, Adam Barr explains the details of a tech demo at Softimage
St. Peter gives hime a lute shows him to a cloud and instructs him to sit on the cloud, play the lute and rejoice.
So the Oracle salesman sits on the cloud, plays the lute and rejoices. Evening comes and St. Peter is coming to the salesmans cloud and asks him how he likes it in heaven.
The guy goes: I'm honest with you, St.Peter. I think it's a pretty bland place."
OK, says St. Peter, instructs the salesguy to follow him and takes him to the express elevator that leads straight to the gates of hell.
St. Peter knocks and the door is opened by Lucifer himself. Behind Lucifer there's an unbelievable scene to be viewed:
Miles and miles of white beach. A nice surf on the ocean. Muscle bound young men and tasty looking bikini clad girls play beach volleyball. Laughter fills the air. There are piles of food and multiple open bars (with an outstanding selection of single malt whiskies).
After having taken in the view St. Peter leads the Oracle guy back to the express elevator which takes them straight up back to heaven.
"Well", says St. Peter. "You have seen what hell is all about and you have to make your final decision now. Do you want to stay in heaven, sitting on a cloud, playing your lute and rejoice, or do you want to go back to hell? But, whatever you do: Your decision is final and can't be changed."
"Alright", sais the sales guy. "I think I rather chose hell".
"Fine", says St. Peter, guides him to the express elevator and down he goes; straight back to the gates of hell.
He knocks and almost burns his knuckles from the hot door. Lucifer opens with a smile and a complete different scenery evolves behind Lucifer:
There's fire and heat everywhere; torchured people with pained faces try to escape their miseries. The screams and yells of the tormented fill the air.
The Oracle salesman is stunned and says: "But, but... this is incredible. I've been here only 15 minutes ago and this place was completely differen!"
"Well", smiles Lucifer: "That was the demo..."
Ok, it's old, but nevertheless illustrates the power of good demo...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well one thing's for sure, even though ATI's graphics demos kick ass, ATI needs more chicks in their demos like NVIDIA has.
-- paper
Note that the DC predates the PS2 by almost a year.
If you want to impress developers, forget tech demos, show them how many units they're going to sell.
Any developer who went for the power of the 3DO learned quickly what the real most important stat was.
The PS1 was the biggest thing in videogaming, it blew away the Saturn and all other comers. It was fresh off whupping the N64 when the DC came out, and my guess is developers felt the safe bet was on Sony's follow-on. They were right.
I apologize. I know full well, I should talk about the graphics demos. Ooo, a Steve Howe graphics demo...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Back in the days, making a demo was about showing off "software"-skills. A demo was all about coding fancy effects on a broad range of hardware with no support for hardware acceleration whatsoever. :(
Ahh, but now, unfortunately, it seems to have gone the way of "We aren't even going to try to run on your machine unless you have pixel shaders". Which is really annoying as every now and again (every few months), I remember about demos and go and hunt some down, download what are currently rated as the best and then find out I can actually run about 1 in 20 of them...
Man I wish I had money, I so want a 9600XT
The demo scene is still going, just see the massive turnout to events like Assembly in Finland.
Just come to Scene Event in Denmark it's the ten'th time this year and we still get new, cool productions.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I was meta'ing when I saw this. Thought it was a troll. Heh.