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One of the most important tech demos in the computer industry was Douglas Engelbart's demonstration of ON-Line System in 1968.


COMPUTERS AND GAMING

Tech demos are often used in the Computer industry, emerging as an important tool in response to short development cycles, in both software and hardware development.

  • Computer Game developers use technology demos to rouse and maintain interest to titles still in development (because Game Engine s are usually ready before the art is finished) and to ensure functionality by early testing. Short segments using finished game engines may be presented as Game Demo s. Critics are also fond of calling certain complete games technology demos, due to the emphasis of the designers solely on the game's technology, severely lacking content in the process. Id Sofware in particular has garnered its share of such criticism.


  • Graphics Card s manufacturers use tech-demos to showcase the performance of their cards even before there are any games that can deliver that performance or before the product is ready to be used outside of the development labs. In November 2002 , NVIDIA started the practice of featuring realistic female characters in graphics card technology demos, by releasing Dawn for its GeForce FX card. The demo featured a scantily-clad forest Fairy with semi-realistic short hair and beautiful wings. Later NVIDIA followed with similar, new demos and ATI Technologies joined the race.


  • Being by nature much less complex than complete games (that have to include dynamic physics modelling, audio engines, etc.), technology demos for graphics can deliver substantially better image quality, making the general look of games lag several years behind video card technology demos. For example, the PlayStation 2 demos ''Namco Girl'' (a lifelike female character from '' Ridge Racer '' winking flirtatiously at viewers) and ''old man'' used all the processing power to produce a high-quality single character model, in a static environment. Xbox trailers also showed Raven, a buff woman and her robot, showing off Martial Art moves.



FAKES

Occasionally, technology demos prove out to be rigged or even completely fake. For example, an empty case with some blinking LED s can be presented as the product, a demo of Internet QoS software can be done on a LAN with manually-regulated traffic, and a pre-rendered video or pictures with notably higher-quality models or resolution can be presented as actual game footage. This last example happens so often in the game industry, it has earned the nickname '' Bullshot ''.


SEE ALSO




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