pouët.net

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Just WOW!

In space no one can hear you scream!

During the compo it made me remind to Offscreen Colonies somehow :)

What an intro! Never ever stop producing such quality intros!

Great moments, not really my thing overall, but I can appreciate some of the small moments in it like the water & flow on the planet surface

Of course space is my favorite theme. And some of the visuals where brutal! Maybe the best water ever. And more and more scenes, it never ended! It's like beyond 2.

MERCURY!!!

Awesome. Why do we even try to demo?

Maybe this can win the PC demo compo tonite ;)

Massive! Actual effects that even make sense in their contexts! Props to everyone involved.

Was blown away by this.

Parts of this were great, but other parts had a feeling of being really low resolution. I don't think the whole "things in space" struck me as awesomely as On from last year. It seemed to lack the finishing polish of On or a "whoa moment" from The Timeless with the city scene and the car lights.

I have to thumb it up for the amount of content in it, and also considering that I thumbed up Conspiracy demo where I had similar misgivings so it would otherwise be a bit hypocritical.

Ace

Holy fucking shit...

Oh my god, that was beyond massive. Congrats for this awesome masterpiece :)

wow

Really good! Fantastic and majestic in many places, but also lost a bit of its wonder in others. This is complaining on a very high level, but apart from the slightly cheesy theme, I think direction lacks a bit at times. And while it left me speechless with regards to visual/technical quality, it didn't evoke the same level of emotions in me as Total Control or Conspiracy's intro did.

Still, this is something I will watch again many times and also can show to others. :)

Fucking.
sick.

You guys finally outdid yourselves in every aspect you've been emphasizing before. This is so completely off the chart next to virtually anything else produced by the scene it's not even funny. Technical merit is one thing and this boasts plenty of those, but there is so much more here that makes this special.

Composition. Editing. Proper montage. The sound design. Composition. Framing. Pace. And once more, composition. There's so much in this that transcends the entire demoscene. I have nothing but utmost respect for the attention put into the pacing and editing. If there's one thing that plagues the scene, it's people's inability take their time to express themselves. Needless rapid cuts and unnatural editing tend to be rampant. It's frankly unfathomable to me how well you managed to blend together such a vast array of editing ideas and do it seamlessly and naturally.

I've previously criticized mercury a lot over their extravagant post-processing and poor color grading. Fermi Paradox really is in a league of its own and on a whole another level of maturity in those regards. Every choice done in the post-processing step supports the intention of the editing. I admire how well you managed to restrict yourselves, in many ways even better than many professionals. Of course overall this looks stunning. I'm yet to watch it realtime or in otherwise high quality, but I saw maybe one scene (early on) that didn't exactly sit right with me color-wise. The rest is gorgeous.

There was some talk on IRC about this intro after the compo. Someone mentioned something along the line "conspiracy had people, mercury had spheres" and another person that "conspiracy had a story", implying Fermi Paradox didn't. I think both remarks I heard echoed from multiple people are disappointingly naive. The approach is very different in both intros, yet surprisingly similar. Both use iconography to support the story and hammer in their intention. Both emphasize pacing and framing over ostentation. There is a story in both of them, albeit different ones. Conspiracy says something about humanity and our feelings over other people. Mercury's is about the simultaneous grandeur and brutality of the nature, and how against all obstacles we yearn to reach toward it. Again, re-watches warranted, but Mercury's resonated more with me on a personal level. It takes a lot more to grasp your emotions with just "spheres".

This is polished beyond anything I would've dared to suspect. Timeless looks amateurish next to this, and I'm not even trying to be hyperbolic. Like I commented on the Conspiracy intro, this feels like a new leaf opening. I hope these intros serve as the catalyst for the scene to start paying more attention to the humane and presentational sides of their productions. The boundary has been pushed, and I hope we all take that into consideration in the future when we push ourselves in demomaking. This is the first Mercury production I really, genuinely, love.

Far and beyond.

Also I feel the more people tend to have to say about a production, the better it is, regardless of whether it's positive or negative things they have to say. There's easily a page or two to write about the actual contents of this intro as well. This is significant.

Space is just such an emotional topic for me and you perfectly managed to capture this feeling of infinity. I love the cinematic look, the colors are perfect and the editing is also reeeally good. Just an awesome release in every aspect!

Loved it

clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap.... (802x min)

Fantastic visuals - the simulated camera/lens flaws are really well implemented.
Great art direction, Some of the "shots" are incredibly well put together, my favorite is the one with vertical light beam reflecting in the water - simply beautiful!

Visuals are awesome to the max. I just wished there were a logic story. Where was the »thing« traveling? Into nothing ... like space?!

Very atmospheric, and yes it somehow reminded my at Offscreen Colonies too.

I would have liked just a bit more story telling.

Ok guys, you definitely killed J.J.Abrams FX easily.
Polished and beautiful as fuck and - oh - the soundtrack!
64k ist tot, diesmal wirklich :-) At least for anybody else

superb!

64k is the new demo.

I fully agree with noby. Can't sany anything more than what was alrady said. Pure love <3

Oh my… I got carried away, thanks for that! <3

Perfect pacing, massive looks. Sick.

♥

boring, 1 or 2 good scenes

I'm torn between pure blank envy and endless joy to see this perfect union of colors, composition and physics.

How do Mercury create such mesmerizing intros? They planet.

rewatched, liked it more.

Just uberawesome

Massive.

Best in the competition imho.

Yay now we dont have to make Beyond 2 :D

fucking savage

You sold me at adding extra craters to the moons.

Wonderful and atmospheric. Really love the outer space setting which reminds me of Beyond.

Had to make a capture.. ;)
YouTube

A 64K monster, so real and beautiful. 64K??

Wohaaa!

Holy fuckstick, this is awesome.
I'm so in love with those visuals!

Awesome. We want more!

Exquisitely crafted and dripping with atmosphere. The Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot" reference at the end when the Mercury logo reappears made me smile too.

I would love for the final to have a resolution selector, so I can run (and capture) this beauty at 4k.

Congratulations on achieving this cinematic quality, I hope there's more to come!

good

Two fixes needed, surely fixed in final and maybe non-letterboxed 1080p too? :) If you don't see them just contact me.

You were waiting for something great to happen, super buildup and quality :) so ending seemed abrupt somehow.

But it already has lots of nice details to like, such as the weather spiral belts, and lots and lots of eyecandy scenes with some subtleties. A great 64k! :)

One spaceintro to rule them all.

Spaaaaaaace \o/

This is what i call art.

amazing :O

Conspiracy counterweight. For sure one of the best intro this year! Thank you.

This actually had more "magic" moments for me personally than the cns one did, but at the same time it had a lot more moments that broke the illusion for me and took me out of the space (pun intended). Absolutely lovely still though overall; great job boys :)

Also the pale blue dot moment as keito reference was brilliant, partially because I had a feeling it was coming when I just saw "empty" space, and also because I'm a sucker for bringing things full circle like you did with the mercury logo :)

A bit too slow paced for me, but damn nice planescapes!

As for the Fermi paradox, i read that, due to data being compressed, mankind emitted clear signals only for a century or two... So we are almost invisible nowadays? So would be "Aliens"?

I really love the pace, atmosphere and cinematography of the first half.

wonderful colors, great and fitting post fx

i really hoped for the scene in the screenshot to have a subtitle called:

"THIS is Mercury station!"

:)

O_o--b

Beautiful!

The whole universe in 64K. Great job guys!

As comparing is days theme, CNS setting was of course more original. However, this left me pretty much speechless. Just look at the "asteroid cam" at about 4 mins, whoah, colours, whoah. Fantastic intro.

This is absolutely wonderful! I won't deny parts of it felt like "Offscreen Colonies: The Remix", but with a completely different take. Totally next-gen, and together with the CNS intro this year, clearly the year of storytelling and cinematography in intro-making. Bravo!

Loved the colors, lens flare and bombarded planet effects!

This is flawless. It's the best 64k I've ever seen.

Excellent work.

Take me to space.

Massive planets !

Nice

I am with Lug00ber: Best 64k ever. I feel extremely privileged to have experienced this live. Thank you and congrats! #1

crazy good.. couldn't believe how many times this made me think "whoa..." .. you guys just kept pushing the bar - amazing.

Visually stunning, artsy and transcedent, but not my cup of tea thi time...I like "Timeless" "Luma" intro way better. Reminds me Beyond intro from CNS years ago...

Kill the spaceship please. It's cheesy and not making any sense :)

Otherwise awesome as hell! As is Fuck!

The compo just got better and better. Very nice prod.

Even a SkyHook is featured, overall a nice smooth ambient intro!

Brilliant

You define beauty.

Superb!

This is the way to produce PC demos in 2016! Congratulations.

Beautiful.

Did you really planet?

pretty pretty pretty

I will always love space shit. Atmospheric, gorgeous. I liked the spaceship - really anything that gives the sense of immense scale.

The cloud shadows on the planet near the start were damn near perfect. I've been trying to get decent-looking atmospheric scattering going for a while now.

cupe: on a scale of physically correct to massive hack, where does your atmosphere rendering sit?

superb!

absolutely amazing

Best 64kb ever.

Masterful work. Really enjoyed all the small visual details, flawless composition, colours etc. Only the last scene seemed somehow off, or maybe I just didn't get it or something.

Very beautiful. Sometimes a bit *too* slow for my taste maybe, still an amazing piece of work.

Super! And those planet surfaces with craters look really stunning!

Stunning.

One more amendment I'd like to add is that I think the soundtrack is spectacular, especially in a cinematic sense. Perfectly complements the drama of the visuals.

But, where is everybody ?

Massive production. For me best 64kb at this time.

i think the correct word is... stellar... huh?!? :)

Stunning everytime i watch it!

awesome

Trippin!

8/10

shoudn't have won, sorry.

the universe, part HG64K
maybe im just too much of a cinematic noob to get it but for me this is the clear winner of this years 64k showdown.
it gives my belly this tingeling feeling of epic and the waterscene is just SO sweet to look at.
also its like the perfect pendant to last years abstract intro, very cool to see you changing approaches while keeping the hg style.
btw. it feels somehow related to the aarhus prod we saw at TRSAC, was that a 'byproduct' of the design process?

Great!

Thank you for this fantastic travel and upping the bar.

some parts and shaders were very awesome, some parts were terribly ugly in composition and colors/details which is a bit of a mood killer.

Some very neat shots and simulation things in there.

It's beyond awesome. Suspended time. I WUV YOU !!!!

Well-deserved.

This is truly beyond awesome!
Not sure if this helps competition or kills it completely.

Remind me of the "Beyond" by Conspiracy (presented at the State of the Art 2004 ^^), but in a more "movie quality"

My favorite detail is rocket launch trail with its different stages. This minute detail -- subtle, yet impossible to miss -- nicely introduces a level of obsession about physical correctness that carries through the whole show.

I have to admit that it took a while to unfold its full potential in my brain, but after watching it a couple of times it got better and better and better and...

So it looks like I have to read these books on composition and editing after all. And I need implement that Camera-crane Operator.

"Timeless looks amateurish next to this"

Masterclass

Stunning visuals, composition and cinematography. Some of the shots were really cool and mesmerizing. Loved the rocket launch and water scene as well.

The whole change of pace and heavy bass starting at 3:35 seemed a bit out of place/unnecessary to me, would have preferred if it kept the ambient vibe going in the first half.

Still, one of the best 64k's I've seen to date.

massive!

Best planet demo so far lol :P

Yeboo.

good production, but not the holy grail for me.

urs: OK, you win, the rings are transparent, I guess.. Still looks weirdish.. Still want the moon crater generator screensaver..

Kubrick would be proud.

Yeah. That's pretty damn great.

Not quite my cup of tea in regards to pacing, but that's just personal taste. It's still absolutely beautiful, and a deserved winner.

Lovely!

Nice Mercury Intro but not the best; too similar as The Timeless with improved effects.

I somehow missed most of this during the competition, but now watching at home, this is pretty much unbelievably fantastic in every respect. The composition and art direction are stellar.

Pretty amazing ... :-o

The only thing that bothered me were the proportions of the rings and the planet in the scene that imitated "In Saturn's Shadow". Because of the preconception caused by that image, it felt as if the rings were too close and the scene was not right. Not an error, though, just bias.

BTW: Just showed this to my workmates and they were also amazed.

amazing. Arsantica 3 has 114kb data size packed ;) so for me these pc demos at 64k are a miracle.

This was really good, even if the first half didn't really do it for me, specially because I couldn't connect with the first ~3 minutes of the music. Any way, it's visually spectacular and globally amazing :)

Very pretty spheres!

Lenses a bit dusty ;-)

literally stellar and even runs great on older hardware!

Most impressed by "lunar" surface... but all of the scenes are beautiful. Great, Mercury!

awesome & what Mixer said!

master!!!

Awesome, the clouded planet scene was really impressive.

That was so awesome!

Finally a prod with correct water rendering.
Because of this I enjoyed this one a lot, and watched it again on my notebook after compo.

This is easily my personal favorite from the competition and while watching the party livestream I was secretly hoping that it would win. Beautifully crafted scenes with a perfectly matching soundtrack and for the most part the camera work is outstanding. Compared to Conspiracy's dem, I find this one slightly more satisfying in terms of length and beauty, and because it is therefore less of a tease. That said, it's impossible for me to like one but not the other production. The hard work that has been poured into both of them is very evident. So contratulations! A well deserved 1st place :)

Excellent!

Really great stuff. Successfully translates that "vast" feeling of space to your screen, very well done. Great music and especially great visual direction as well.

2016, cretins are still giving thumbs down because "shouldn't have won", that's amazing.

About the important stuff: really great 64k

"the flawless"

I especially love the photography of this one. It's a stellar 64k by any means and definitely an evolutionary step in intro making alongside with Conspiracys one. Quite funny that two such different yet alike releases were made at once. Seems like it just had to be. Or did you talk to each other? I'd still prefer the coincidence ;)

really beautiful.
still, some how, left me thinking 'these guys can take this step further'..

Awesome production! Thank you very much for continuously pushing the 64k scene forward.

King of the space themed 64k hill. Like a very polished Universe (mfx) series spin-off.

Most stuff has already been said - this intro is so well thought out and polished it's not even funny anymore. Finally the great tech that Mercury (and that other group) always have had comes to shine, and marvelously it does.

Only sour point for me is the soundtrack - comparisons to MFX' Universe series have already been drawn, and I must say as a long time fan of that series the music here let me down, both in the harmony and spaciousness (or spacyness) department. But that's only a small nitpick and doesn't take away from the total awesomeness. :)

...one of the few demos that has a convincing feeling of "deep space" :-)

you are nuts.

Spaaaace!

I love demo's with lots of this in!

What can I say besides: This is absolutely amazing and thanks so much for all your help on our prod!

Our plan to go 64k is postponed now :D

you must know i love you all

Congrats! wonderful.. :)

Gorgeous scenes in this piece. Almost makes you believe you're a Skinjob seeing things at the Tannhäuser Gate :)
Got a little food for thought on the the crater-building scene, though: article

Kubrick the fuck :) Best mudlark and water scene so far. Insane colour-grading.

wonderful.

hm same as: Darkness Lay Your Eyes Upon Me

sound is really cool...
visuals are hm dunno quite boring to me...
so piggy

I find it hard to give any objective words for so many of your prods, and this is no exception... mind blown, as is completely usual. But then, reading Noby's articulate thoughts made me realise he's totally right -- this kicks Timeless's ass.

gamechanger

Ossom intro + great space ambient music. But maybe a bit too much like a "Discovery Channel mode" :)

64 KB?!?!

pure art

Unbelievable! That close-up scene with the mud/rocks and that water made me almost forget that I was watching a 64k intro!

Impressive

very good! good direction and camerawork and some nice use of effects - i like the fluid / turbulence thing on the gas giant.

but (oh dear.. here it comes): in my humble view, it doesn't have the magic and mystery needed to make it great.

the first issue is that it's really slow paced - like galactically slow. that's a fine way to make things look epic, particularly on the big screen, but it also leaves nowhere for anything to hide. watching the exe at home it left my mind free to wander - and to start mentally dissecting all the individual scenes while watching them.

and the scenes were too easy to dissect. on each scene i couldn't help but think "ok, so this is just this generator and that generator", "blob particles rendered into a texture for the crators?", "heightmap landscape", "i know that water simulation..", "those lens flare sprites look like a circle with a blob subtracted from it", "i wonder if it's this atmospheric paper or that one", etc.
that's probably a lot to do with the theme (which is to be fair something i'm not a fan of - i didn't really care for beyond either). you're essentially talking about a lot of spheres - no great mystery with those - and a lot of natural effects: landscapes, water, the lighting & atmosphere rendering etc. they're all things that are quite well understood, and lend themselves to very well to generation and realtime rendering - which makes it hard to find the "mystery".

so there's the problem for me. what you have here is a 64k with a lot of different elements, where every element is really really well implemented, but none of them alone seemed new; and it's put together really well but it still added up at most to the sum of its parts, not more.

the conspiracy intro is the perfect foil to this one. it's much lower tech, there's fewer different elements in it, it's technically much simpler - but it adds up to way much more. it keeps your mind moving and focused and leaves you wondering how it was done. even if the answer was "its all fake", you still have to think about it for a bit. :)

note that what i'm complaining about here is the difference between being a really good 64k vs being the greatest ever 64k, not being a good or a bad 64k. clearly this is a really impressive 64k with a ton of great work in it, everything is done very well and put together very well. to the point where complaining about anything is kindof ridiculous. sorry. :)

Both this and the other 64k from Revision, completely breaking new boundaries!! awesome work

Smash, you can do it better.. come back :)

yes!

wow.

Super!

Awesome!

Stunning!

I could repeat what I commented on the Darkness lay your eyes upon me which is basically just that I have nothing to say. I'm speechless. It's absolutely stunning!

Out of this world, literally.

Amazing!

śmierć, kutas, zniszczenie. gt8!

no really boys, you are totally awesome, as an ULTRA fan of 2001 Space Odyssey, Interstellar and space in general your intro talked directly to my earth <3

you deserve a gigantic

nice

JA!

holy shit.

masterpice

Very, very impressive!
Amount of work behind and attention to details in unbelievable.

However, I have one _big_ complaint (or actually a wish):
So, you want to tell me, that you create all this nice and rather complex procedural landscapes just to show them for a few seconds from a few camera angles in the almost-slide-show manner ?!
To me, it's a huge waste of potential, as people should be able to enjoy this content to the fullest. I would obviously like to see an interactive version in 64k, but say 128k is also fine ;)

During and after the compo my overwhelming feeling was that it was a bunch of pretty pictures arranged in a rather boring way. And that wasn't alcohol-induced attention deficiency per se, because the Conspiracy entry grabbed my attention from start to finish, despite being pretty slow. Rewatching it back home made me pay attention to the quality of the rendering and the scenes a lot more. Also there's some serious cinematography going on. Besides, the quieter setting made for a much more immersive experience. I guess Mercury outconspiracied Conspiracy. :)

Also, as a space and SF nerd I also have to applaud the references to 2001, the iconic Pale Blue Dot image, and some other classic space imagery. (Minor niggle: there's a scene with a ringed giant where the ring system does not align with the cloud bands. Maybe it's the perspective but it looked unphysical.)

And the thumb of course.

classic

lovely!

wow, excellent!

classic scifi in 64k - yay!

Everbody said already everthing.

Nice.

I feel science fiction. And nice PostFX!

Beautiful

Very nice presentation. Congratulations.

excellent! very atmospheric

To infinity and Beyond

Just amazing.. every aspect of this is just amazing!

Now lets go to space already ffs!
Really love the colors, the sublety of habitat in the moon(?) and pacing.
This is another: how you do it.

Amazing space-porn. You could make a print out of most scenes! Picture perfectness. Thanks! <3

Thats how I found it. It seemed completely clinical and surgical to me. Sure, it might be pretty in places, but the space theme just didn't resonate with me. It seemed to be like a bad porno, pretty, but dull.

Or maybe I have no taste.

interstellar!

the more times i see this, the more meaningless and inconsistent the progression feels. doesn't take away from the aesthetics and the simulation stuff, but still.

gfx! Y U NO hexagonal lens flares? ;)

really nice but like most of these kind of 64ks, it bores me to death
thumb is for effort

I cant even picture how good this is. Fuckings to Angels :)

This production are amazing, great fx, great music. ROCKS!

It's very well made but contrary to Conspiracy's intro this one doesn't work for me, it's way too boring for me.

Possibly my new favorite demo of all times.

Have my

Gallery:
http://imgur.com/a/PKnGy

Reality vs. Virtual

Wow, very inspiring. I'm in awe in front of your talent.

...but where is everyone?

Relaxing and inspiring.

Jaw dropped!

Nice, but far from DLYEUM.

Some very nice scenes any hyperealistic rendering in there. And packing it all in 64k is art.

Excellent!

Solid.

Fangirling mood ON! :)

first half was good

GREAT prod. Almost works perfectly on Wine 1.9.20. Only issue is that the blue dot at the end does not appear. Fantastic work.

Ivan: that as far as I know is a driver issue, at least on NV drivers, seen that happen on Windows myself.

Gaah! Forgotten thumb. ACE prod!

I hope you can release a fix soon. On GTX1060 with current drivers it seems in some scenes the z-order of the effects is fucked up.

Thanks for the fix, was just trying to watch this again. So god damn epic. I was too blown away to leave a proper comment the first time. Everything about this is perfect, music is amazing, scenes, rendering, cinematography, grading and general presentation. A timeless concept perfectly executed.

By the way, best lens flares in the game by far.

I was ready to thumb up at the loading point. (cute loading bar btw!)

it was cool

5* just for space!

That water surface shader is to die for... among all the numerous other amazing-looking things that most other groups only wish they could pull off at all, let alone in 64k. :p

This is a huge step forward in quality of cinematography and storytelling compared to the previous Mercury demos, and I can't emphasize that enough. The Timeless in particular felt like all the great tech was going to waste because the direction was lacking. Here, on the other hand, the result may not be perfect yet, but it's damn close!

This demo feels like the time and place in my head seconds before falling asleep headphones on listening to own unfinished chill tracks. It's a nice place.

why haven't i thumbed this up yet?

Interstellar in 64K. Massive Hans Zimmer style soundtrack is awsome. We all love you guys.

Found this one by accident today. Just awesome! It totally has that '2001: A Space Odyssey' atmosphere.

Wonderful!

the realtime impact crater surface is already worth a winner \o/

Carl Sagan would be proud of you guys

just that realistic crater itself worth a winner \o/

In space no one hears my screams of fuckin' disbelief! :O One of the best 64kb ever! <3

masterpiece

Too good!

"Une invitation au voyage".
Awesome.
One of my prefered of all time (and space :-) )

Really nice space themed 64k, saw this in havocs Field-FX 2020 demoshow that was yesterday on Youtube now

i still remember the wow-effect on this one but forgot apparently give you my thumb - great work guys!

but your group website address bugs me, why "mercury.sexy"?

Jawohl. :)

This is so awesome!

The setting, the direction, the music, everything is perfect here.

Amazing demo!

Beautiful!