More Demos

Crystal Ball

NVIDIA's new Crystal Ball demo is very impressive. The first shot is of the snow globe sitting on three griffons -take note of the triangle number. The reflections off the glass globe are done with cube environment mapping. The second shot takes you inside the globe. The castle is fully detailed, and the "snow" is actually made up of little NVIDIA logos.

Nice globe

A closer look

Evil mode

Light shift

Lightning

The Lightning demo is also very impressive. The card performs per-pixel lighting on the surrounding metalwork as the lightning strikes the metal NVIDIA plate. Notice how the pipework stops shining when we turn off per-pixel lighting.

Lightning strikes

The calm

Light it up again

No more shading

Principles of Shading

The Principles of Shading demo does a very good job of explaining what the per-pixel shader actually does. I'll let the little lessons on each screenshot speak for themselves.

Shiny chrome

Scuffed

Shiny and scuffed

Another angle

Techy logo

Techy logo + reflection

Techy logo + reflection + mask

Base texture

Base texture + reflection

Base texture + reflection + mask