Nvidia demos

In order to showcase the abilities of GeForce chipsets, Nvidia creates technology demos that render in real-time on the chipsets in question (while videos are usually also made available). This listing attempts to mention recent, more notable releases.

GeForce FX

Dawn

Main article: Dawn (demo)

Dawn is likely the most well-known Nvidia demo-piece yet. It was crafted to display the power of the GeForce FX series. Dawn is a forest fairy, and is used as the basis for some later Nvidia demos. The demo features extensive use of the card's shaders.

Dusk

This demo was timed to appear during GeForce FX 5900's release. The eponymous main character Dusk is highly reminiscent of Dawn; sharing her wings, hair, and a similarity of form. She could be an urban version of Dawn, a striking opposite of the faerie's soft leafiness in her black street outfit. The Dusk demo added realtime shadows that were not present in "Dawn".

Vulcan

Vulcan is another FX 5900 demo. It features volumetric shading and multiple light sources.

Blobby Dancer for AMD64

Blobby Dancer for AMD64 is a liquid dancer, in a surreal, psychedelic-like environment. The demo was developed to take advantage of the increased performance offered by the 64-bit processing architecture of the AMD Athlon 64 processors. Blobby Dancer was also developed after the Geforce 6 series were.

GeForce 6

Nalu

Main article: Nalu (demo)

Another GeForce 6800 demo, Nalu features a mermaid, based again on Dawn.

Timbury

Timbury, an entomologist that draws pictures of his specimens, stars in this demo created for the GeForce 6 series.

Clear Sailing

Once again using a marine theme, this demo showcases the animation of liquid on the GeForce 6 series. A pirate ship seeking to escape its regal pursuer on the high seas demonstrates water surface, foam and splash effects, along with enhanced fire, explosions and smoke.

GeForce 7

Luna

Something of a throwback to the abstract science fiction themes of the demoscene, this GeForce 7800 showcase once again features an eponymous female form, levitating with an intricately rendered head of hair. Again, upgraded shaders are used.

Mad Mod Mike

The rotund, jetpack-clad mountain of a man in this GeForce 7800 demo mods the formerly wimpy computers of gaming enthusiasts everywhere into blazing performance rigs. Demonstrates PixelShaders 3.0, Radiant Lighting and Depth of field.

GeForce 8

Adrianne

The Adrianne demo was modeled after real-life model and television personality Adrianne Curry, using complex shading and deformation techniques typically reserved for offline-rendered animation. Adrianne's skin shader is the most complex in the scene; 1,400 instructions per pixel, 15 render passes, five separate bump maps, and a complex, physically based lighting model that simulates sub-surface scattering.

Froggy

The skin shader is a modified version of the Adrianne skin shader with modified scattering properties derived from photos of real frog skin. The shader has high-detail bump and detail maps and a complex, physically based lighting model that simulates sub-surface scattering.

Box of Smoke

As you move the smoke generator within the box, the computational fluid dynamics simulation is being processed in real time on the GPU.

(The Box of Smoke demo also runs on Nvidia's Geforce 6 and 7 series, whereas Adrianne and Froggy require an 8 series to run.)

Cascades

The cascades demo showcases D3D 10 features by rendering a dynamically generated highly detailed floating 3D rock on the GPU and running a particle physics based simulation of a waterfall on the GPU which interracts with this 3D rock.

Human Head

The human head demo renders a multi-layered facial skin model using a new subsurface scattering method that employs a sum-of-Gaussians formula to simulate the scattering of light that occurs under the surface of a translucent substance such as skin. The result is a subtle diffusion of shadows that allows illumination to bleed into areas that would ordinarily be in total shadow. The model itself is based upon a 3d scan of prosthetic makeup character actor Doug Jones.

GeForce 200 Series

Medusa

The Medusa demo, in addition to being a tech demo, is a short story interpretation of the tale from Greek mythology. The demo showcases emotional character facial animation, implemented with "texture buffers", as well as character rendering with multiple passes for shadows, skin shading, depth and color accelerated with "stream out". It also includes examples of dynamic stone which "grows" through the generation of geometry on the GPU using "geometry shaders".

GeForce 400 Series

Design Garage

Design Garage, is a demo which shows the capabilities of modern GPUs for ray tracing. The user is presented with a car the colour and texture of which he can change along with the position of other objects such as the sun. The demo renders the scene via ray tracing almost in real-time.

Hair D3D11

This demo is a showcase of the capabilities of modern GPUs to realistically and interactively render hair and fur like materials in real time.

Island D3D11

The Nvidia Island demo uses Direct3D 11 to create lifelike water and land, with varying levels of detail. The demo was designed to run on GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards, and will run on GTX 500 GPUs as well.

SuperSonic Sled

The SuperSonic Sled demo by Nvidia showcases the power of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 400 series GPUs. The demo begins with a character strapping in to his 'SuperSonic Sled', pulling a lever, ready to go. At this point, the user may use on-screen controls or keyboard shortcuts in order to control the sled. The camera follows the sled at cinematic angles, stopping at points where things get destroyed by the mach 1 speeds of the sled.

GeForce 500 Series

Alien vs. Triangles

The Alien vs. Triangles demo showcases the new tessellation features of DirectX 11, which is introduced with the GTX 400 series GPUs by Nvidia. This demo was also used to showcase the power of the GTX 590, Nvidia's fastest card as of 2011.

Endless City

This demo showed how hardware tessellation can improve the details and the quality of modern games. The user can navigate through a procedurally generated city, the details of which he can change by adjusting the tessellation level.

External links

• nzone.com nZone demo downloads page
• HDPS Wiki: Nvidia demos