NVScene 2008!
category: general [glöplog]
Quote:
a) dont have quadcore machine
b) dont have ps4.0 gfxcard
c) dont have vista
d) dont have latest dx10 dist
a) so what ? 99% of demos are GPU bound, not CPU bound (put aside the precalc time for size limited prods)
b) from what I saw, most nvscene demos require a PS 3.0 card, not ps 4.0 (ps 3.0 cards have been around for years)
c) most Nvscene prods run on XP
d) most Nvscene prods require DX9, not DX10
All those prods run fine on a 8800, which was first released in December 2006
5 points to keops for missing the point entirely.
he had a point...
...you just need better gfx-cards from now on,you won´t need to exchange the entire machine anymore...just the GPU !
and every 2-4 years a new CPU or some faster RAM :)
...you just need better gfx-cards from now on,you won´t need to exchange the entire machine anymore...just the GPU !
and every 2-4 years a new CPU or some faster RAM :)
"The times, they are a-changing"
- Bob Dylan.
- Bob Dylan.
I was wondering, like PS, if "offline rendering" will not at some point make more sense.. Considering the amount of people downloading/watching demos as videos.
Then I remembered FullHD videos were still fucking big and that no matter how good h264 is, videos aren't nowhere near the quality of the full resolution, full frame realtime show.
However, let me quote myself: (on gamesetwatch.com's article)
We seem perfectly fine with crappy quality media. Youtube, mp3s, even chiptunes for fuck sake, how much I love them. There's a rift between the old guard and its appeal to perfection (look at old music records for example) and the "garage"-like quality that is creeping out everywhere in the mainstream.
Then I remembered FullHD videos were still fucking big and that no matter how good h264 is, videos aren't nowhere near the quality of the full resolution, full frame realtime show.
However, let me quote myself: (on gamesetwatch.com's article)
Quote:
I think I'd like to present demos as being the most efficient way to deliver HD quality content to one's eye.
But in a culture of youtube, crack-bite sized consumption of videos for consumption's sake (the same way mp3s both ate at the quality of audio + ended turning music appreciation into consumption) it seems taking the time to get on the couch with a nice drink and turning the light off to "meditate" visually with a demo is too high of a cost to us.
Leisure we have plenty, too bad we use it not to relax, but to reproduce the fast paced scheme of work time.
We seem perfectly fine with crappy quality media. Youtube, mp3s, even chiptunes for fuck sake, how much I love them. There's a rift between the old guard and its appeal to perfection (look at old music records for example) and the "garage"-like quality that is creeping out everywhere in the mainstream.
the only reason there appears to be so much crap nowadays is that everyone can afford saving it. bad media released in ancient times was lost because it wasn't interesting enough to preserve. the same will happen with demoscene prods, given enough time.
Quote:
a) so what ? 99% of demos are GPU bound, not CPU bound (put aside the precalc time for size limited prods)
b) from what I saw, most nvscene demos require a PS 3.0 card, not ps 4.0 (ps 3.0 cards have been around for years)
c) most Nvscene prods run on XP
d) most Nvscene prods require DX9, not DX10
A fact is that I can't see less Nvision productions that I could from Breakpoint/Assembly this year, and I have XP/VISTA and a decent video card. Never had so problems to execute a demo like this time. The reason: the focused fucking publicited demo machine.
Please Nvidia, send us compo machines to see the 4K winner prod. :)
havoc you have completely misunderstood my argument.
I am not talking about "quality" in the sense of an entertainment of quality.
I'm talking about dead, cold, scientific quality. Resolution, high fidelity, these kind of things.
I am not talking about "quality" in the sense of an entertainment of quality.
I'm talking about dead, cold, scientific quality. Resolution, high fidelity, these kind of things.
Quote:
Please Nvidia, send us compo machines to see the 4K winner prod. :)
so you just realized a plan behind that demobox-giveaway? ;)
ok, but then i wonder why you refer to old musical records, of which so many are being digitally remastered in recent years?
Don't forget 99% of the PCs sold have onboard graphics.
What they call "digitally remastered" is marketing.
Engineers (who really want great quality) nowadays are still mastering records on beasts made by this company: http://www.solid-state-logic.com/
It's often the most expensive (outside of architecture) investment of a studio. And some of them are actually completely analogue mixers. Even new ones I mean, those aren't vintage items.
Don't mistake me for an analogue wanker, this thing trancends silly categories such as digital vs analogue: on average, CDs nowadays are mastered with a crappier quality than in the 90s.
That is what I was referring to in the context of music.
But this is just an example of a trend you can witness in many kinds of media.
--
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Engineers (who really want great quality) nowadays are still mastering records on beasts made by this company: http://www.solid-state-logic.com/
It's often the most expensive (outside of architecture) investment of a studio. And some of them are actually completely analogue mixers. Even new ones I mean, those aren't vintage items.
Don't mistake me for an analogue wanker, this thing trancends silly categories such as digital vs analogue: on average, CDs nowadays are mastered with a crappier quality than in the 90s.
That is what I was referring to in the context of music.
But this is just an example of a trend you can witness in many kinds of media.
--
For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
For people who submitted entries for NVScene, I have a quick poll on something I am curious about. If you could answer with *one* of the following in your next post that would be cool:
Did you enter because,
a) You're interested in seeing the NA scene grow, and you thought more/quality entries could inject some life.
b) You got a demo kit and simply used that as an opportunity to make a demo.
c) Some other reason (fame, glory, prizes, etc - please state)
I ask this since I (and I'm sure all of us) will be watching the NA scene closely over the next year to see if perhaps NVScene had an effect. If so, then obviously the answer to the above is worth considering in efforts in other countries.
Did you enter because,
a) You're interested in seeing the NA scene grow, and you thought more/quality entries could inject some life.
b) You got a demo kit and simply used that as an opportunity to make a demo.
c) Some other reason (fame, glory, prizes, etc - please state)
I ask this since I (and I'm sure all of us) will be watching the NA scene closely over the next year to see if perhaps NVScene had an effect. If so, then obviously the answer to the above is worth considering in efforts in other countries.
at tiny bit of a), but mostly; c): to compete in the probably best 4k compo this year. ;)
thats just untrue,xernobyl !
and what havoc is talking about is just called RETRO !
retro appears in everyones life,not just demosceners
they like the sound of the 60s or 80s... they all like to play some levels of katakis again or even pong...
its the same with rock-music f.e. : there have been spawning a lot of bands which do Retro-Rock in the last years...like Wolfmother ! they use old equipment like tubic-amplifiers and hammond-organs....just for the sound of it...last time such equip was used was in the early 70s...but the sound still is unique...
you could also call it melancholy or sth alike....its remembering the good times == childhood !
and what havoc is talking about is just called RETRO !
retro appears in everyones life,not just demosceners
they like the sound of the 60s or 80s... they all like to play some levels of katakis again or even pong...
its the same with rock-music f.e. : there have been spawning a lot of bands which do Retro-Rock in the last years...like Wolfmother ! they use old equipment like tubic-amplifiers and hammond-organs....just for the sound of it...last time such equip was used was in the early 70s...but the sound still is unique...
you could also call it melancholy or sth alike....its remembering the good times == childhood !
_-_-__ talks about the same thing :)
no I do not.
just for the record, i'm with keops here. and i don't think he's missing your point, ps; he just doesn't buy into your premise (and neither do i) that the majority of nvscene releases have high hardware requirements.
yes, there are some, but i've watched a bunch of entries on my 2.5-year old machine with a GF8600GT i bought some months ago after the radeon x1600 i originally had for this machine died. without any problems.
the nice thing about realtime is that most of it scales quite decently with processing power. if you need ps3.0 then you need it, but when you fix the target feature set, there's really quite a long technology curve you can ride over the years. so outside of those generational skips - and they're getting less and less frequent: watch the time between d3d9 and 10, compare with d3d7/d3d8 or d3d8/d3d9 - there's no revolutionary gains you get from new hardware, just an incremental (though still exponential :) increase in computing power.
one reason that realtime stuff is interesting for me is that it really does scale quite sensibly. even if you can't watch the newest plastic demo in full hd, chances are you probably can watch it in 800x600 at a decent enough framerate even with "value" hardware. of course, there are still problems - probably the biggest one being video memory: once that starts thrashing, your framerate instantly dies. but all signs point towards graphics hardware getting increasingly homogenous and better integrated with the rest of the system: GPUs right now are basically just a collection of specialized programmable cores, and things like virtual memory are getting into it. more and more of those discrete performance jumps are disappearing, and it's developing towards a very wide range of bandwidth/processing power with very few such bumps. of course the huge range of available power is a big challenge, but overall i get the feeling that targeting realtime is more and more sensible for projects (even non-demo projects), not less. right now, there's still a big difference in methodology and algorithms between offline and realtime rendering, but the two are definitely converging and have been for some time. so i think this would be a pretty poor point to stop focusing on realtime indeed.
but back to keops' rant: i can perfectly understand him. i'm incredibly sick of the whining that ensues every time someone dares to release a demo that uses somewhat recent hardware. texas is a perfect case in point: ps, you said earlier in this thread that "you're talking about days where it took 2 years to deprecate your machine from the majority of the new kick ass prods, nowdays it takes less then 6 months". well, dx10-class hardware has[b] been around for close to 2 years, as has vista. now the [b]first demos using this kind of hardware appear, and people complain about the hardware (and software) requirements. this is completely ridiculous. you're not cut off from "the majority of releases", ffs. of the how many 4ks released this year (definitely over 50), there's now one that requires dx10 level hardware. <2% is not the majority, now matter how you slice it.
now, as a party organizer, i'm trying to be conservative with hardware specs - get really fast hardware to have a nice bigscreen experience, but use hardware/software that's not necessarily of the most recent generation so there's still a sensible audience.
but as a coder, i also realize that these demands are incredibly frustrating when you really want to push current hardware (as opposed to last year's), and certainly part of the appeal of the intel/nvscene demo compos is that you actually get to be a little more cutting edge if you want to. i really think that this shooting down people whenever they try to be cutting edge has to stop. it's a decision to make for every demomaker, and when you decide for state of the art you know beforehand that you're excluding some people. the lynch mobs that regularly form whenever someone dares release a "high-end" demo don't tell the creators anything new. they're just disgusting.
yes, there are some, but i've watched a bunch of entries on my 2.5-year old machine with a GF8600GT i bought some months ago after the radeon x1600 i originally had for this machine died. without any problems.
the nice thing about realtime is that most of it scales quite decently with processing power. if you need ps3.0 then you need it, but when you fix the target feature set, there's really quite a long technology curve you can ride over the years. so outside of those generational skips - and they're getting less and less frequent: watch the time between d3d9 and 10, compare with d3d7/d3d8 or d3d8/d3d9 - there's no revolutionary gains you get from new hardware, just an incremental (though still exponential :) increase in computing power.
one reason that realtime stuff is interesting for me is that it really does scale quite sensibly. even if you can't watch the newest plastic demo in full hd, chances are you probably can watch it in 800x600 at a decent enough framerate even with "value" hardware. of course, there are still problems - probably the biggest one being video memory: once that starts thrashing, your framerate instantly dies. but all signs point towards graphics hardware getting increasingly homogenous and better integrated with the rest of the system: GPUs right now are basically just a collection of specialized programmable cores, and things like virtual memory are getting into it. more and more of those discrete performance jumps are disappearing, and it's developing towards a very wide range of bandwidth/processing power with very few such bumps. of course the huge range of available power is a big challenge, but overall i get the feeling that targeting realtime is more and more sensible for projects (even non-demo projects), not less. right now, there's still a big difference in methodology and algorithms between offline and realtime rendering, but the two are definitely converging and have been for some time. so i think this would be a pretty poor point to stop focusing on realtime indeed.
but back to keops' rant: i can perfectly understand him. i'm incredibly sick of the whining that ensues every time someone dares to release a demo that uses somewhat recent hardware. texas is a perfect case in point: ps, you said earlier in this thread that "you're talking about days where it took 2 years to deprecate your machine from the majority of the new kick ass prods, nowdays it takes less then 6 months". well, dx10-class hardware has[b] been around for close to 2 years, as has vista. now the [b]first demos using this kind of hardware appear, and people complain about the hardware (and software) requirements. this is completely ridiculous. you're not cut off from "the majority of releases", ffs. of the how many 4ks released this year (definitely over 50), there's now one that requires dx10 level hardware. <2% is not the majority, now matter how you slice it.
now, as a party organizer, i'm trying to be conservative with hardware specs - get really fast hardware to have a nice bigscreen experience, but use hardware/software that's not necessarily of the most recent generation so there's still a sensible audience.
but as a coder, i also realize that these demands are incredibly frustrating when you really want to push current hardware (as opposed to last year's), and certainly part of the appeal of the intel/nvscene demo compos is that you actually get to be a little more cutting edge if you want to. i really think that this shooting down people whenever they try to be cutting edge has to stop. it's a decision to make for every demomaker, and when you decide for state of the art you know beforehand that you're excluding some people. the lynch mobs that regularly form whenever someone dares release a "high-end" demo don't tell the creators anything new. they're just disgusting.
ok,as i´m in this Thread anyway already:
I for myself ( not speaking for my bro´s ! ) entered,because i needed something that kicked me into having_to_do_sth_again_finally ! means : i have been active in 1992-1997 on AMIGA already...i had some off-time,due to bad living...but after i recovered from that,i always wanted to do what i love again : making demos !
but i´m also very lazy in every aspect,thats maybe why my (i say my,because i´m the only person in BB involved into this prod!) code got that lame in the end...i even self-thumbdowned my product,just because i dislike it myself...the only good thing in it is the music,which i luckily did myself,but wouldn´t have creeped the 4k upon the 11th place without having been able to use gophers softsynth ( 4klang is the name ;) )
i tried a lot,but after i found out,that the time got lesser,i just thought: release anything that looks good and fits the sound...i think i made it somehow,but its also very lame to show ONE single effect that long,i knew before i submitted and tried to add at least a 3rd part,didn´t succeed....but keep in mind this was the prod,that should have arsened me to do sth again and my first pc-code ever,first prod after 13-14 years...and we placed 11th...which means i succeeded somehow,even if i´m not proud of it !
ok,that was more info than your question wanted to get answered,but its ok i guess,you all know me by now :)
if some1 sees a plan behind NVIDIA handing out just SOME boxes : my/ours demo just is in need of a lot CPU,because of the many sin and cosin - calls ;)
has 1 vertex,1 pixel-shsder,resulting in 105 bytes...plus one hypnoglow-shader resulting in about 900bytes,including the code to set up rendertargets for it and stuff...
these 3 shaders should be runable on every ps2.0-card there is !
so,if our entry stutters,try on the same config with better CPU ( Demobox,on which it got coded on ofcoz has a 2.2GHz c2d-E4500 ! ) (in the stream it stuttered btw ;) and why did it need 3 starts ?? pure disliking? )
I for myself ( not speaking for my bro´s ! ) entered,because i needed something that kicked me into having_to_do_sth_again_finally ! means : i have been active in 1992-1997 on AMIGA already...i had some off-time,due to bad living...but after i recovered from that,i always wanted to do what i love again : making demos !
but i´m also very lazy in every aspect,thats maybe why my (i say my,because i´m the only person in BB involved into this prod!) code got that lame in the end...i even self-thumbdowned my product,just because i dislike it myself...the only good thing in it is the music,which i luckily did myself,but wouldn´t have creeped the 4k upon the 11th place without having been able to use gophers softsynth ( 4klang is the name ;) )
i tried a lot,but after i found out,that the time got lesser,i just thought: release anything that looks good and fits the sound...i think i made it somehow,but its also very lame to show ONE single effect that long,i knew before i submitted and tried to add at least a 3rd part,didn´t succeed....but keep in mind this was the prod,that should have arsened me to do sth again and my first pc-code ever,first prod after 13-14 years...and we placed 11th...which means i succeeded somehow,even if i´m not proud of it !
ok,that was more info than your question wanted to get answered,but its ok i guess,you all know me by now :)
if some1 sees a plan behind NVIDIA handing out just SOME boxes : my/ours demo just is in need of a lot CPU,because of the many sin and cosin - calls ;)
has 1 vertex,1 pixel-shsder,resulting in 105 bytes...plus one hypnoglow-shader resulting in about 900bytes,including the code to set up rendertargets for it and stuff...
these 3 shaders should be runable on every ps2.0-card there is !
so,if our entry stutters,try on the same config with better CPU ( Demobox,on which it got coded on ofcoz has a 2.2GHz c2d-E4500 ! ) (in the stream it stuttered btw ;) and why did it need 3 starts ?? pure disliking? )
knos: i'm not enough of an expert to really assess mastering quality. what i do know is that comparing different eras within a certain craftmanship or art gnerally speaking is extremely difficult to do objectively, especially for individuals, since it is so much influenced by factors such as taste and historical context. (that's not to say you're wrong, rather that i don't know ;))
_-_-__
ok,just sounded alike... as analogue is also the old amplifiers,and new ones are digitals....
off to not pollute this thread anymore and to get some more inspirationals == beer !
ok,just sounded alike... as analogue is also the old amplifiers,and new ones are digitals....
off to not pollute this thread anymore and to get some more inspirationals == beer !
havoc, still you can objectively admit that mp3s are inherently inferior (sound quality wise ONLY, I'm not talking about mobility, ease of use etc..) to the previous defacto standard, the CD. The fact that we trade quality for a certain comfort (or cheapness) is what I'm talking about.
Just watched the demoscene.tv recording of the democompo. Was the audience very quiet or was it just the recording?
I mean, from the recording of the 4k compo you could hear spontaneous applause and shouting now and then, but in the democompo the only thing I heard besides the between-demo-clapping was two occasions during the plastic demo. I was waiting for the crowd to go crazy several times during the Andromeda+Orb demo, but nothing...
Recording fail or audience fail? ;)
I mean, from the recording of the 4k compo you could hear spontaneous applause and shouting now and then, but in the democompo the only thing I heard besides the between-demo-clapping was two occasions during the plastic demo. I was waiting for the crowd to go crazy several times during the Andromeda+Orb demo, but nothing...
Recording fail or audience fail? ;)
What I'm really afraid is that with those nvidia demoboxes, since now, nvidia would stablish the "standard demo pc platform" for the next year, for the next compos, until next nvision in where Nvidia will give the next standard platform.
This could be a non-breaking bussines circle, the main obscure reason about the Nvidia presents, pushing again and again pc platform to upgrading, as the way as Microsoft does. In that case, presents investment would be back quick.
Anyway, bye-bye compos. I just dream something to learn, not something to win.
This could be a non-breaking bussines circle, the main obscure reason about the Nvidia presents, pushing again and again pc platform to upgrading, as the way as Microsoft does. In that case, presents investment would be back quick.
Anyway, bye-bye compos. I just dream something to learn, not something to win.
knos: true ofcourse, but imho that downward trend is only a very recent development. if you look any further back in history than the CD, there's loads of examples of technology far inferior to the current level. added to that, i already find myself simply not bothering to download mp3's ripped by random script kiddie and just paying the fee to get a "properly encoded" version of a record i like. so it's not like appreciation for quality has been flushed down the tubes completely, it's influence has just been temporarily diminished by the combination of technologies available to the general audience.