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Innovation doesn't necessarily mean technical innovation. Just look at the c64 scene.. but then again, the scene is mostly filled with people interested in technology so polygonwanking is common.

and while we're at it, technological innovation != polygonwanking

Pushing the limits in demoscene way doesn't mean pushing the limits of high end hardware. It means pusing the limits of existing (sometimes old) hardware and getting 200% of limited resources you have.

Something like: "How the fuck they do that run smooth on GF5?!!"

Preacher: most of 8-bit democoding is all about technical innovation.

Trying to push the latest peecee junk to its limits, however, is just pointless and consumer-whorish wanking. It takes several years to even get to the "limits", and new peecee junk typically becomes "old" by this time, so there's no point in even attempting this kind of crap.

ah, so speak those who've never tried it.

viznut: I was referring both to demos like Fairlight C64 stuff which rely on concepts and style and the fact that you don't need to have the latest CPU or GPU to enjoy the technical challenge (as masterm elaborated), if that is what you seek.

Personally, I don't care about the technical side at all, except in 8-bit stuff..

What's the point in even trying?

Yep, there's quite a lot of design-oriented demos on the 8-bit side as well, just like there are on the PC side. And I generally think it is a good thing.

However, on the 8-bits it is also possible to push the technical limits, and this is not possible on the PC except with artificial limitations (executable size, etc.)

viznut/pwp : I guess trying to make a rotozoom on a c64 is technical innovation.... ?

I mean if you draw a picture with your tongue, it does not make it a masterpiece.


Sorry but I can't stand it anymore : C64 demo were uglly slow with awfull music. That was fun and probably state of the art 15 years ago !
It's all over now ... face it ! I was an atari scener a decade ago and i admit that demo were uglly and boring but at the time that was the best computers could do. To a certain extend I really wonder if some sceners stay in the oldschool trip because that's the only thing they know and the only thing they have left in the scene.

I guess it would be hard for the old stars to restart learning new things and rank low at parties. Let say the whole oldshool trip is a confortable way to stay at the same place in all the ways.

I really like to see innovative demos that push us forward.
Without ASD, Fairlight, Portal process and someother I would have stopped demos long ago.

State of the art is overrated. And it's the point of view thing again anyway... of the groups you mentioned, only ASD touches me one bit from the inside and it's certainly not the technology in it that does it.

Technology is not the only value in demos. It's like saying drawing with pencils is outdated since we now have Wacoms.

Making a rotozoomer on the c-64 is not a technical innovation, as it has been done so many times (unless, of course, the rotozoomer is better than any previous one). However, doing a rotozoomer on the Atari 2600 is a real innovation, as I don't think it has ever been done.

I assume that the rest of your post is trolling, so I'm ignoring it for now.

nytrik: I totally disagree, not to mention that you are somewhat disrespectful once again towards people who worked or still work on those oldskool platforms.
We already had this talk in 2004 and it seems that you are still totally narrowminded about that matter, that's too bad...

The whole "pushing stuff to its technical limits and beyond" is the old way of hacker/nerd thinking that works great on fixed (and preferably, for some extra fun, barely documented) platforms. But not everybody is into that. Especially when it comes to such a quickly moving target, like the PC. Other folks push the boundaries of content creation (how many months did ASD work on that demo again..?), focus on detail, style or direction, adding as much "bling" as possible, and/or focus on mainstream appeal. What I like to see is some conceptual innovation, possibly narrative structures that transcend demoscene context. There is still next to nobody doing that.

Anyway, it is not the technology that matters in the long run. I never watch old demos because of their innovative technology or great effects, but because of their entertainment/artistic value.

Technical tricks are something that may amaze you for a couple of years, before people's skills go forward and the old tricks become "obsolete". However, good music is always good music, and nice sync and flow is always great, despite the platform or technical talent.

how is forcing yourself to use obsolete hardware any less artificial than constraints on executable size? :)

Ok it's probably me then... I simply don't get the point

preacher: ah, but you still think technical innovation is "drawing more polys", where in actuality it's about "getting closer to the image you had in your head in the first place". thats certainly why we keep using highend hw - not to boast about numbers in the infofile. destop's logos in media error look a lot cooler in 250k polys with hdr exposure and a modern lighting technique than they would if they were flat and 5k polys. (although, granted, a lot of people would just see "another damn graf logo" however it was rendered, but WE would know the difference :) ). it's also about not limiting the creativity of the artists at all. giving them the ability to do whatever they want.
however, seeing as your and our demos are approximately polar opposites in style, i dont expect you to get it. (just like i dont get "touched" by a fractal rendered in black lines).

and that's the point about technical innovation. i know our stuff would be cooler if we could do all realtime radiosity and didnt need to bake anything anymore, if we could do all the fx we wanted, if we could render unlimited amounts of stuff, etc etc. so we're going to keep pushing. if your style doesnt demand that you push for it, then good for you, you dont have to worry. :)

Doing the same ugly cyberpunk gray/brown 3d since 10th years doesn't make it a masterpiece.

Preacher: LOL YOU JUST DON'Y UNDERSTAND YOU STUPID NOOB! If you don't use normal maps, ambient occlusion and HDR you are just crap, you are not eleet. Make a boring flyby with "advanced shaders" you found on the net, GPU gems or siggraph papers and you will become eleet. Because let's face it, it's very hard to compute a tangent space, use a 64bits textures or make a parallax mapping shader, especially when you can find dozens of papers about that topic everywhere in books and PDFs! THAT is technical innovation!

Fortunately, there are no papers on how to make pleasant/entertaining demos yet...

C-64 demos are a less artificial category than PC 64K intros because the limits of the C-64 hardware are REAL ones, not something arbitrary you come up for getting some challenge for a competition.

There are also real limits in various aspects of audiovisual content in general, or even in the human sensory system that reacts to it. For some time, I've been planning to apply some "oldskool"-style "push the limits" attitude to these. That's what I think relatively new hardware could be quite nice for.

I do get your point, of course, but I guess it also depends what kind of images you have in your head :) That's the reason why you don't like my prods and I don't really care about the Fairlight PC style, or some other groups. And that's cool with me, there is and should be room for everything and everyone.

I don't think of technical innovation as you mean it is bad thing, of course. On the contrary, I like seeing cool new effects and rendering styles and all that, or great implementations of existing effects (such as the smokebox in Media Error) that are pushing the technical limits. I would just like to see more of the "why" instead of "what" or "how" in the scene. That's the area where groups like ASD or Adapt excel. To me the medium is not the message, and production values in recordings aren't the music.

(of course the merits of my relatively abstract concepts that might not be apparent to anyone else but myself can be debated).

Btw, new neon colored lines coming up soon ;)

(And yes, PC demos are also a more artificial category than C-64 demos, if you include arbitrary rules such as "it must not contain animation", "it must be realtime", etc.)

i think that's too bad actually, it WOULD raise the quality level...

sure old hardware has limits, but that is not my point.

I am just saying that when one chooses to do a demo for obsolete hardware that this is just as artificial a constraint as choosing to limit yourself to 256b, 4k og 64k of executable size. You could just do the demo on your 'peecee' and avoid all the hassle. Just as well as you could do your 4k in 16mb and your demos in maya.

preacher: it's quite funny.. we do pretty much agree, you know. it should be about the message, not just the medium.
i guess the problem is, you dont see our message (it's carefully hidden below layers of unreadable graf) and i dont see yours (it's lost somewhere along a line fractal) - but thats not to say it's not there. all the demos we've done have a message, a way of seeing the world that's slightly off balance. it's just delivered in a different way, or a way you dont connect with. thats a completely different thing to a demo which is purely there to say "look at my mastery of the hw".

oh, and kudos to keops for missing the point entirely. :)