"Our light induced image of truth, filtered, blank of its substance..."

[gargaj]

Today I watched in horror as BoyC, sitting at his work computer (Phenom II X6 + GeForce GTX 560 + 8GB RAM) looked through the Flashback releases on Pouet, then proceeded to watch some of them. Through YouTube. In 360p

Comments

[anonymous]

BoyC has never been big on watching demos, it has always seemed to me that he preferred making them. I've always watched demos on youtube, and mpeg/avi captures before youtube. Yeah, I use Linux, so no demos for me. Before switching to Linux, I didn't have the 3d cards to watch majority of demos. Before the 3d cards era, I didn't have GUS to watch many of them.

Also, regularly going back to check if new releases have a capped version already, downloading the youtube videos or avis, copying them to an usb stick and carrying it home to watch, that's not my exact definition of convenience (NB: I always had tight download quotas for the past 10 years).

Quit this elitist bitching, do a demo about it.

[gargaj]

Why would I bother making a demo about it (which I did, btw), if noone's gonna watch it the way it's intended? I do consider watching video versions of demos the "piracy" of the demoscene, and to that end yes, my demo is "copy-protected".

BoyC and I watched more demos than anyone up until around 2007-8, and I know this for a fact, because he always had a better computer than I did so he'd see demos way before I do, and that bothered me, but there still were plenty of demos for me to see too. (And there's your Linux-argument.) The fact that he doesn't now is a shift of interest that unsettles me.

Finally, if all this sounds elitist to you, that's fine because I'd rather go down in history as an elitist who in hindsight did his best to keep the scene alive. This is the attitude I feel I inherited from the generations of sceners before me.

[anonymous]

Indeed, generations of sceners exhibited this attribute. The old elite, who once cheered for everything with a bunch of glVertex3f() (or glenz vectors or rasterbars, depending on generation) in it turned into that sorry bunch who apparently hate most demos, or at least don't care about them. Who are convinced that the scene is dead. Yeah, not being an adolecent and getting burned out by work makes it hard to get excited and evokes nostalgia instead. You are dead, not the scene.
Maybe we should ask mu6k if he thinks the scene is dead.

I don't get how ranting about youtube videos is supposed to keep the scene alive. By the same logic, what do you think about the mindcandy guys, selling all those 'pirate' copies?

Also, thank you for your other efforts to keep the scene alive. I just don't think this post is one of them.

[gargaj]

The "old elite" I'm talking about certainly didn't cheer for any of those things. The people I'm inspired by (Shock, Astroidea, Andromeda, Halcyon, Orange) were along for many generations or are around still, and adapted to whatever technology was around. They defined the scene by producing, not by opinionating. That's the heritage I have: making demos. I'm not nostalgic because I wasn't there, I have nothing to be nostalgic about

[nosfe]

well, pouet really isn't helping with providing people the easiest way to watch demos on real platform. proper and actual hardware and driver requirements really should be listed there.

[gargaj]

I partly agree although apart from a few specific prods/distinctions there isn't really much to pay attention to. That said, what to do with people who don't even try?

[nosfe]

well, on windows prods it matters if it's run on 95/98/2k/xpvista/7 and yet those are not distinguished, or what gfx card is used, or what driver version is used..
then on amiga what chipset and what accelator on an 1200 you have etc, there IS a lot of stuff that isn't obvious, people just THINK it's obvious because they know it by themselves, but as preserving demoscene productions for the future generations, pouet is not gathering information on how to actually run the prods and because of that the video will eventually be the only way to watch demos.

then again, estheticlly, if demo has no interactive or dynamic parts, why would it matter if it is run realtime or watched on a hq video? if the user experience is otherwise exactly the same, does it matter if there is a knowledge of the demo being run realtime or not?

[gargaj]

Because it's not the same: frame rate and resolution. I wanna know whether what I'm seeing on the video performs well on the platform. A big (BIG) downside with e.g. Satori demos for me is that they only look good in realtime (because they're so noisy the compression murders them) and yet they run so slow they're impossible to enjoy. Now imagine someone watching them in 360p with a fixed 50fps frame rate - not exactly the same, is it?

As for the Pouet-related parts, yes, I hear you, and I have ideas how to fix it, but Pouet is such a gargantuan website by now, so any idea must be carefully reviewed before it gets implemented.

[thrillcityradio]

i mostly agree... I mean, part of me doesn't even like watching demos on a projector. Sure, by the same token, there's a few examples where downloading a highres capture is ok (eg. if you're trying to watch the most groundbreaking demo for BBC Micro, or if you're living off baked beans and your budget can't afford shaders but feel like your life depends on watching the next plastic.pl demo). but yeah.. generally speaking, watching demos on youtube just smells bad.
As an aside topic, i'm still gutted that flashback's 70+ prods haven't been uploaded, mostly, yet. I fear they may never be. Yes, i've nudged the organizers about it... just a bane in an otherwise mind-blowingly awesome party.

[gargaj]

Most of them are at http://www.scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2012%2Fflashback12/ actually.

[anonymous]

Every demo I can run on my machine I watch in realtime, same goes for demos that I show to friends. The feeling from watching it in realtime is different from the feeling when watching it on Youtube (may it be because of micro stuttering, a not so constant framerate because of heavy cpu/gpu load or whatever). But for people with not so good computers or when you just want to enjoy multiple demos one after the other without lots of configuring in between (aka pure consumption, that you mentioned), the easiest way is still to download the videos and watch them. So in my opinion its a matter of each owns approach towards quality. If someone wants to watch them on youtube, I'm fine with that - though as already stated I always prefer watching them in realtime.

Anni/Annikras