Elevated by RGBA and TBC

[fops73]

what can i say....no words for this...the spirit of the old Atari ST demo days is still alive :) amazing! use your resources!

[zakopako82]

i have an i7 and a Radeon 5770 but this demo goes slow on me!! i wonder how the hell can i run this like in the video

[xarinatan]

@zakopako82 It's rendered at 1368x720, that helps. Also that graphics card is midrange, i assume they made it for a gaming-range GPU.

[1xWertzui]

Are these fractals?

I WANT A RESCUE ON FRACTALUS GAME REMAKE WITH THIS ENGINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE­EEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Too bad I can't program.

[1xWertzui]

IS THIS REALTIME RENDERED? MY MIND BLOWN?

D8

[couer1911]

@1xWertzui Of course, algorithms are used.

[Kvokki]

MY GOD!

[GeneralGuitFiddle]

Very awesome, very very awesome.

[z1ph0n3]

DAMN! It crashes on Windows 7 64... please FIX IT!!!

[z1ph0n3]

@z1ph0n3 nevermind.. got the right link :)

[couer1911]

@z1ph0n3 fix it? that is your fault for used a bloated OS.

[chupathingy99]

there;s no way this is 4k.

[TheSophera]

@chupathingy99 If you doubt it, feel free to try it out for yourself.

I promise you, this is 4k.

[IntrinsicPalomides]

@chupathingy99 Yeah it is, download link is in the info at the top, and he explains more on his website, google iquilezles its top on the list and click vanilla, it includes tutorials on the tech used in it. Thousands more and impressive 4ks out there.

[xamanto]

Finally got it to run with fluid framerates, THX certified sound quality and 100" video projection.

A third into it I fucking cried. I consider it one of the greatest pieces of art and a small monument to science and computer technology. To create a composition of sound and visuals this delicate using a single A4 sheet worth of assembly code (literally, you could re-type the whole program in minutes) is much like building a beautiful city out of mud using a single cake fork.

[TaskForce141th]

Are you god?

[Yurumates]

And it's 4 kilobytes...

[cannotwest]

They use DirectX for rendering, so it's not really 4k (not even close). DirectX does all the job.

[ChuckyGang]

@cannotwest If you read on his homepage you can see that DirectX is used to put up the screen and compile the shaders. then directX does.. NOTHING!. You should learn how the rules works of 4k demos.

[jrmb242]

@cannotwest : Every computer has OS beneath, BIOS, even firmware or microcode. You cannot think like this. The task is simple - on a modern *standard* PC make a 4K program capable to do this. And that they did that and its incredible! I have no idea how this can be even remotely possible and I think (pardon my non-modesty) I'm quite a good low-level programmer. Not quite.

[esaedvik]

Watching this for the fourth time today. Jeezuz this is sweet. 4k is totally my favorite demo genre, such amazing skill requirements.

[ookami3380]

someone took notes of sanxion , rearranged it and changed melody a bit but its there. i can hear it

[goodgoodgoodful]

Better than TRON :)

[pach2003]

nice fake!

[ChuckyGang]

@pach2003 xkcd.com/481/ Its not a fake. you CAN download the exe and run it..

[TheDecadeMoon]

@ChuckyGang Thumbs up for xkcd!

[TheMrMis]

w shakesie jesteś dobry ale w YouTube słaby :)

[TheDecadeMoon]

4K!!! Get outta here :)

[blobface007]

@TheDecadeMoon yeah it is!

[TheDecadeMoon]

@blobface007 Yeah I know. I just can't believe this is only 4K of data.

[MrWazhead]

I've had this demo for a while now and the more think about it, the more I realise what it is: its nothing short of poetry. Poetry is trying to get an emotion across to someone, usually in the shortest way. This does exactly that.

[zingmars]

Crashes on my PC =[ too bad. Still looks awesome.

[ChaosKills]

mountains?

[danrulz98]

What's the significance of it being "4K"?

[ChuckyGang]

@danrulz98 4k means thatt EVERYTHING to do ALL this is a 4k (max 4096 bytes) big .exe file. (YES.. including music).

(it is allowed to use dx9 dll....)

[itaialter]

@danrulz98 All of that information is on a 4 kilobyte file. It's all just raw data that represents pixels... To compare, a Movie file of that same animation probably takes 50 megabytes (51,200 kilobytes).

[razj1]

n1ce



[daddlertl3]

for Windows 7 users:

because the win7-version is not available anymore on pouet. net (download error), I did the win7-fix myself by recompressing it with crinkler. I uploaded the resulting files on my webspace, so you can get it from there and test it without having to do the fix yourself:

daddler-t-l. de/downloads/elevated_win7. zip (without spaces)

[user137]

@daddlertl3 Win-7 link worked good, and runs perfectly on my machine.

[z1ph0n3]

@user137 what link?

[IrbisPL]

this makes me hate you.

[phongbong]

This reminds me of this musical CGI film my dad bought once called, "Beyond the Minds Eye."

[plexafci]

God bless these guys. Everything is possible. I was an Amiga coder years ago, in that time people said that Amiga blitter cannot read HDD drive and Copper cannot make blitter programs. But it WAS POSSIBLE ! I dont know what is better demo or its music.!!!

[BUTTONTANG]

@plexafci amiga makes it possible!! :-)

[gibs2b]

@BUTTONTANG @LMAO :)

[fobef]

@BUTTONTANG Me and a friend discussed our old Amigas and how much was possible with limited resources. I came to think of this 4kb demo and sent him the link. Not until later did I see that more people had made the Amiga connection. Heart warming!

[ChuckyGang]

@fobef then try out "luminagia" by Loonies here.. 4k ON an Amiga from the very same party :)

[jerzkid87]

@plexafci I have no idea what any of that means, but thats a great message that everything is possible- and its nice to hear it affirmed in even the most niche specializations.

[plexafci]

God bless these guys. Everything is possible. I was an Amiga coder years ago, in that time people said that Amiga blitter cannot read HDD drive and Copper cannot make blitter programs. But it WAS POSSIBLE!

[MercedesBenzE300D]

gtx460sli & win7 64 can't run it.

[SirCr4igS]

@MercedesBenzE300D My 480 + win7 64 ran it

[xamanto]

@MercedesBenzE300D i think the issue is win7 64. it doesn't run on my machine either. win7 32 runs fine though.

[XeroNXS]

Impressive!

[gemis94]

omg all that with just 4k :O

[Shaker1978]

Runs beautifully on 9800GT. I'd love to understand, how to create such 3D impressions without 3D engine in 4k!! Respekt :)

[stanaangel]

My ATI Firepro V8800 played this quite well on Win 7 64 bit, nice work to the originator. :O)

[pumoo]

4キロバイト

[airriel]

すごすぎる！！にわかには信じがたい映像！

it's miracle movie!!!

[konmisnake]

素晴らしい。の一言に尽きる。

[Wolkenkratzer0130]

DAS IST DIE DEUTSCHE TECHNIK!

how splendid!

[nusoku1]

これがエロアニメだったら日本でも受け入れられた

[nitturo]

awesome demo - sadly it's hard to run it on Linux.. :(

[knuxthefox]

It seems this won't run at all in Win7.

[RokyBanana]

Jawdropping. Mindblowing. Fantastic. Awe. Blrlrlrlbllrlb... soooo impressive! :All thumbs up!

[mystrdat]

4K of massive skill and glory. Hats fucking down.

[FrightNightTV]

Jeysus, what the...absolutely first class code

[EnigmaNovb]

Life is ... beautiful again.

Thank you.

[polaris911]

This demo does not run on Windows 7.. tried it.

[Zeratuhl]

@polaris911 Provided you have the proper graphics card and drivers it runs just fine on windows 7.

[Zalo10]

There are many video games that do not look as good as this today, and it's in 4 KILOBYTES. WHAT THE **** Probably the music midi would be something like 29k by itself! It's amazing!

[cyborgtroy]

I wish the demoscene guys would explain their tricks more often or publish the source code or something.

[Atad64]

@cyborgtroy and they usually do so ;-)

[cyborgtroy]

@Atad64 - freaking where?

[Atad64]

@cyborgtroy Mainly on group websites.

[crocz]

@cyborgtroy

google "behind elevated iq", first result, pdf file.

[cyborgtroy]

@crocz - thanks, mate

[keepcoding1]

Wow, unbelievable!! That's just stunning!

[JohanKH]

Fucking insane :D

Lovely quality!

[arbicom]

Increible !!!! solo con 4 K de memoria

[OBOGAN]

4k for such quality + real time ,that pretty impressive !

[fshahid88]

I ran this demo on Win XP on Mobility Radeon X300. Took about 2 mins to load and when it started it only shows pixelated cyan screen but it plays music nicely. I think the cause is due to the fact that this card can only support upto pixel shader 2.0 However, it runs .kkreiger (96k game) fine on this system. Can anyone explain this?

[BUTTONTANG]

@fshahid88 iirc it was optimized for 8800 series so that's probably the problem

[Snotskovlen]

and maybe because kkrieger it old and this isn't? ..

[extremrams]

@fshahid88 and ati is just crap ;)

[Atad64]

@fshahid88 Radeon X300 is extremely to poor GPU for this one. It requires Geforce 8800GTX. As i recall .kkreiger was released five years ago or something like that.

[TheLex1972]

@fshahid88 If you consider the fact that basically what you are seeing on the screen are formulas, formulas and more formulas, I think it's reasonable to assume that you need at least a Shader Model 3 card. Shader Model 2 only allows pixel shader programs of at most 96 instructions and that's just not enough.

[EdgeOfPanic]

@fshahid88

Crappy ATI drivers i guess.

[xoen6]

awesome.

[rumbamama]

awesome visuals. shame about the music.

[pyiffer]

What are you expecting in 4KB? (4096 bytes, or less space than this whole page's HTML)

Oh, and yes the program is only 4KB

[rumbamama]

You don't need hundreds of megs of space to make an interesting tune - just look at all the SID music out there. This is just Hollywood-imitating cheese.

[pyiffer]

consider this....

All the imagery + audio + choreography of the demo was done in 4KB, it should be more considered a miracle that it was possible to produce in that small of space. Oh, and the fact that it fits in an executable file (overhead) means it is probably more like 3500 bytes.

[rumbamama]

it doesn't change the fact that the song is musically unimaginative if technical limitations were to be blamed. I've heard great soundtracks on many 4kb intros, so it can be done.

[TraxAkme]

@rumbamama I like soundtrack form this vid, so it isn't as bad as you think :>

[NmGab]

@pyiffer as all modern 4k intros this one too was compressed with a special tool created by scene people. That 512 exe header you mention is not there at all and thanks to the compression the original image can be even twice as big as the final binary.

[xtrium1]

@NmGab twice ? that would be a pretty poor compression ratio. Crinkler can make a 4k compressed exe (which does have a (smaller than usual) PE header, incidentally, _plus_ the ~200-byte decompression routine) out of a 16k or more uncompressed binary, depending on the exe contents.

[xyzzykhk]

Amazing shit. They even got chromatic aberrations in.

I can't get it to run on Win7 :(

[plonk420]

look for the win7 fix (or run the EXEs thru crinkler with /recompress)

[garboool]

vineting too :-)

[ccricers]

So does this rely on DirectX (seems doubtful for the size) or does it send input directly to the GPU drivers? For 4k I imagine only a lot of low level stuff going on

[ccricers]

I wonder why game companies don't hire more demoscene coders since they've been working with legacy systems, they would know how to squeeze more out of modern ones, as we can see here.

Is it simply that procedurally generated content would be too impractical in practice? ie. require monstrous amount of loading and pre-processing time

[ChuckyGang]

Actually.. many demosceners DOES work as Gameprogrammers.

[KeauHouSoft]

Game companies are developing for the money, they dont care if the game is good optimized. Instead of optimizing they higher the hardware requirements...

[wolfenzero70]

c64 was the greatest computer! but faded away because the lack of expansion ports ! and Memory add ons , plugins , and harddrive

[Atad64]

@wolfenzero70 Sure was great (and in my opinion still is in some way) but i wouldn't blame its end on lack of expansion ports or RAM expansions or whatever. in fact there was a RAM expansions for this machine.

The case is that things with we achieved now on 64 (like 8bit sample playback, 4 channel trackers, thousand of colors, texture mapping and so on) was proposed back in 80`s by hardware of 16 and 32 bit machines.

[hansvinderslev]

@wolfenzero70

not true! surf pouet.net and you will find several NEW 2010 c64 demoscene productions!

[NihilQuest]

Imagine this easily would fit in C-64 memory. Amazing.

[SpaceAmbientz]

@NihilQuest

It wouldn't... Remember that this Intro needs DirectX and Windows to run and huge amount of CPU/GPU processing power as well as 2-3 gigs of RAM.

[mari1234mari]

@SpaceAmbientz

well, it's more like 200 Megabytes (0.2 gigs), but yes, still a lot for a C-64... It doesn't require any CPU power tho, it could work in a 386 too, although it needs lots of GPU power.

[SpaceAmbientz]

@mari1234mari

On 386 it will take ages to compute all necesary data. ;) Mate I know what I am talking about. On Core 2 Duo @ 4.1 GHz the process takes about 75-80% of single core. :) Don't spread shit that 386 would be enough... :)

[mari1234mari]

There is no data to calculate other that the music (which is computed once in the begining of the demo). During rendering the CPU does virtually nothing and stays idle. It goes up to 80% of usage because it keeps sending rendering commands as fast as the GPU can consume them. Just adding a Sleep(1) in the render loop would automatically drop the CPU consumption to a 10% or whatever. I'm completely sure it would work very well in a 386 provided the 386 had a 8800GTX next to it, that's the trick!

[lordbaztard]

SpaceAmbientz, meet Inigo Quilez aka Mari1234mari aka the guy that coded the thing. You may know what you're talking about generally, but when it comes to this? Yeah... no.

[SpaceAmbientz]

Well so tell me which 386 processor can run Widnows XP or Vista.... ;)))

[SpaceAmbientz]

Without MMX and SSE. ;) And run DirectX libraries... Come on, man. 386 is not enough. Even Pentium III 1 GHz will show you slideshow instead of smooth great demo.

[lordbaztard]

Actually, I've had Win7 running remarkably well on a AMD 900mhz Duron, and it had been boosted to about a GB of ram. Slow to boot naturally, but reasonable once booted.

Seen what some people have done with a c64? Yeah it's nothing like this, but considering what it is, absolutely nothing to sneeze at.

[lordbaztard]

Oh, and I had the procedural graphics version of this, Ixaleno, running on a win2k machine at around... I think the lowest I had it running on was a Pentium 2 250mhz. Took five minutes to pre-render, naturally, but it still rendered flawlessly.

[SpaceAmbientz]

For sure. There are no Pentium II 250 MHz mate. There are 233 MHz and 266 MHz versions. Hah come on... stop lying. Please. Procedural version of this.. Hahah. You make me laughing. So why do we need at least GeForce 8800 512 MB to run it? Just for fun?

[NihilQuest]

Yes I realize this wouldn't actually run on C-64 :)

[Maalstrond]

You now realize that to view this 4KB video you just downloaded 8 to 56 MB from YouTube, depending on the quality.

[lordbaztard]

Funnier too, when you go to the pouet link in the description and grab the high-quality video at 1920x720, it's 220MB in size, a GB in size if it were true HD. (1920x1080)

Or just grab the 4k and watch as it shreds your poor computer to pieces for attempting it :D

[brainfossil]

So beautiful.

[Gareth2Jones]

Wow

[Rohedin]

Holy shit. I mean really. Is this video rendered by the 4KB of code or is it actually on-the-fly? If the latter, then double that earlier holy shit.

[snuggl123]

This is an entry in a 4k demo compo and so the code, texture and music all need to be fit the 4kb size.

[zinckenator]

Rendered on-the-fly... if your computer can hanlde it :)

[rasty2k]

Remember this demo the next time Sony tries to make us believe that good games cannot be made with less than 35 Gigabytes of data!

[MyNameIsBucket]

This isn't a game, much less a 'good game'. If you want to control a player in this environment, you lose precious processing time. More so if you want the player to INTERACT with the environment and be more than a wandering disembodied pair of eyes. And there's the fact of the game world being nothing but an endless mountain range...

You get the idea. Still, it's impressive.

[rasty2k]

Surely I know quite well that this is not a game. But my comment still applies!

[snuggl123]

infinity universe (.com) is a game under development that uses generative landscapes and textures much like this demo.

[zaphodb777]

Ummm, Ever hear of Rescue on Fractalus? I am sure if they consumed another 4K of code, they could have made it such a game.

But your uninformed comments, not realizing the total size of all you see and hear is 4096 Bytes before execution is something egregious beyond belief.

No, it's not a game, but with very little added it could be one hell of a game.

[MyNameIsBucket]

@zaphodb777 You can't procedurally generate I/O code. With those limitations, you'd have what amounts to a very pretty interactive screensaver.

Of course this program is much larger in memory than on disk, because it's generating data in a controllable way. Player interaction can be controlled in much the same way. If you want an 8k game that looks like this, yet has the same depth of gameplay of Fractalus, you're welcome to it.

[xamanto]

@rasty2k procedural generation & specialized programming != games.

"size" doesn't doesn't matter for a great gaming experience. design and gameplay do. but additional space for great design is not a bad thing either, so sony isn't wrong.

[UnIXbLueStar]

@rasty2k yeah right.... the code that generate the terrain and textures is 4kb, once executed it still use a shitload of memory.

[kn100kn100]

@UnIXbLueStar ...yeah?

[powerbackeyesitsme]

incredible

[xxxsaikerxxx]

good magic

[Vincen7Vega]

This is pure magic.

How can this be done in 4096 Bytes of code?

[veers0r]

There is a description of it ;)

Google 'iquilezles behind elevated' ;)

But yeah, it's still magic. O_O

[iou0]

NO textures or Mp3 my guess.

[JesusOfDarkness]

textures are generated, same with the music.

[grostami]

@Vincen7Vega It's actually 4085 Bytes!! ;-)

[wduty]

@Vincen7Vega Lot of procedural tesselation and texture, perlin noise, multi pass shaders. And magic.

[nilssonbla]

Epic One. Really good job, i´m impressed.

[tfactorable]

They show us that there are a lot of things except the money in this world...they are true programmers - very talented and inspired of what they do.we should follow them.thkz guyz.

[hooverphonique]

I find myself watching this again and again just for the soundtrack.. fantastic!

[silencefreedom]

it's all done by coding, include the soundtrack, by chuck

[batlin]

Holy piss. These guys should be coding games for bigmoneyz. I hope they are...

[Laeskig]

4k... That is just insane...

[julievillarreal19]

I like the song! ^^

[drzeissler]

MAC-Version PLEASE!

[hansvinderslev]

@drzeissler

hehe funny! :)

[0mateczko0]

Shaders can do anything...

Textures are not that important...

[DolgorsurenDagvadorj]

It's impossible.

The program probably invokes a wormhole and streams the video from somewhere else.

It's impossible.

[semoscharros]

check source code before making such claims... fractals are the key

[DolgorsurenDagvadorj]

Sorry. I guess I have shit humor (and so as you).

And I didn't know you can make wormholes with programming.

[semoscharros]

Touché =)

I just read your comment too fast and didn't realise it was sarcastic... life would be so grim without sarcasm.

[zinckenator]

aah.. thats what they are using the Large Hadron Collider for. Video streams from another dimention :)

[lmisterZl]

dont work on Windows 7.

Help =(

[arnaucastellvi]

Como evolucionan los landscapes XD

La intro es la leche, mis felicitáncias.

[Demruth]

This is ridiculously impressive

[grostami]

Here's a breakdown of how much data this demo is producing:

Video = 1920 x 1080 x 3 Bytes/Pixel x 60 fps x 215 seconds = 80248320000 Bytes = 74.7 Gigs Uncompressed (That's just the video)

Audio = 2 Bytes (16bit) x 2 (stereo 2-channels) x 48000 (samples/second) x 215 seconds = 41280000 Bytes = 39.4 Megs of uncompressed audio

TOTAL = 80248320000(Video) + 41280000 (Audio) = 80289600000 Bytes

This program is 4085 Bytes . . .

HENCE THE COMPRESSION RATIO IS

19.7 MILLION TO 1 !!!!!

[paulymath]

omgomg and if you loop it, it's infinity!

a statement about information density is left as an exercise to the reader.

[grostami]

Hi paulymath, have you even downloaded this demo?

When I see YOUR entry into the 4K competition then we'll talk, but until then . . . SHUT THE FUCK UP and appreciate RGBA's AWESOME demo.

Incredible procedural landscape

Some of the best Noise texture work I've seen for rocks, grass, sky, & water

Crinkle's Revolutionary code compressor

Great synth with a great soundtrack

Animated Camera paths, texture variable changes & light show bars go to the music in the sky

[paulymath]

Haha wow... grostami... I don't know where to start. I was pointing out that your calculation of "compression ratio" isn't particularly rigorous.

I'm not sure why producing an entry for the 4K competition is required to point that out, or why I would have to download the demo when the video's here, or why pointing out your silly comment is equivalent to not appreciating the video... but judging by your posts here I guess knowing trivia doesn't mean you're qualified to grasp a simple point.

[silencefreedom]

yeah

[runescape6464]

It doesn't work like that.

[FrosDOwnz]

Tried it on my P4 Prescott 3.2 @ 4 ghz, eVGA 8600GT, 4GB G-Skill Pi 800 mhz DDR2 RAM and Windows XP 32-bit. Not working for some reason... how long should it take to load?