A demonstration of the Unreal Physics Engine being used for Gears Of War 2.
Video:
Peach’s Castle [GameCube – Tech Demo]
In 2002 Nintendo sent various developers a GameCube interactive tech demo in order to show them the graphical capabilities of their new console. In this tech demo you can move an arrow through Peach’s Casle and in every room you can see a different graphic effect. It was never released to the public and could have been lost forever, but luckily sometime ago the Peach’s Castle Tech Demo was leaked online and it can now be preserved.
Update: it seems that this demo was used in the 5-22-01 GameCube SDK. The official Nintendo description says: “There are eight rooms (stages) available for introducing various features and effects. In addition, there are two demo modes available for giving effective demos: normal demo mode and auto demo mode. In normal demo mode, users move from room to room using an arrow, and each feature is introduced. In auto demo mode, the camera moves automatically from room to room and each feature of each room is introduced. The total time required for all rooms is 4 minutes 30 seconds.”
Thanks to Jay for the english corrections!
[spoiler /Click here for the tech-demo info/ /Hide the tech-demo info/]Stage Number: 1
Stage Name: ENTRANCE
Total Polygons: 50640
Total texture size: 2260 KB
Total modeling data size: 1027 KB
Stage Number: 2
Stage Name: DOME
Total Polygons: 17571
Total texture size: 5930 KB
Total modeling data size: 324 KB
Feature shown: large textures, mipmaps
Stage Number: 3
Stage Name: SPIRAL STAIRCASE
Total Polygons: 29754
Total texture size: 1120 KB
Total modeling data size: 639 KB
Feature shown: bump maps, specular maps, shadow maps
Stage Number: 4
Stage Name: HANGAR
Total Polygons: 34111
Total texture size: 2157 KB
Total modeling data size: 591 KB
Feature shown: antialiasing
Stage Number: 5
Stage Name: CAVE
Total Polygons: 30051
Total texture size: 1241 KB
Total modeling data size: 478 KB
Feature shown: local lights
Stage Number: 6
Stage Name: CINEMA THEATER
Total Polygons: 15253
Total texture size: 2673 KB
Total modeling data size: 250 KB
Feature shown: texture projection
Stage Number: 7
Stage Name: METAL MARIO!
Total Polygons: 5330
Total texture size: 1859 KB
Total modeling data size: 149 KB
Feature shown: environment map
Stage Number: 8
Stage Name: How Many COINS?
Total Polygons: 92160 (768 objects * 120) + 504
Total texture size: 159 KB
Total modeling data size: 26 KB
Feature shown: maximum polygons[/spoiler]
Thanks a lot to Marco / Grotesque and 50CALBR for the contributions!
Images:
Videos:
Euphoria Engine Tech Demo
What is Euphoria?
Euphoria is a game animation engine created by NaturalMotion based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis, Natural Motion’s proprietary technology for animating 3D characters on-the-fly “based on a full simulation of the 3D character, including body, muscles and motor nervous system”. Instead of using predefined animations, the characters’ actions and reactions are synthesized in real-time; they are different every time, even when replaying the same scene. While traditional physics engines uses ragdolls (like the Havok Physics Engine) for animations generated on the fly, Euphoria employs a more complex method to animate the entirety of physically-bound objects within the game environment. According to its web site, Euphoria runs on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC hardware platforms.
In February 2007, NaturalMotion and Rockstar Games announced that Euphoria would be used in future Rockstar titles. A press release that was enclosed with the second trailer eventually confirmed that Grand Theft Auto IV is the first of Rockstar‘s games to feature Euphoria. In April 2006, LucasArts announced that their next Indiana Jones game would use Euphoria.The current Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 title Star Wars: The Force Unleashed also uses Euphoria.
In August 2007, NaturalMotion announced Backbreaker, an American Football game for next-generation consoles that employs Euphoria to generate tackles in real-time, as opposed to playback animation. [Infos from Wikipedia]
Engine Tech Demo:
GTA IV Tech Demo:
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Tech Demo:
EggHead Shred [N64 – Proto / Tech Demo]
EggHead Shred was rumored to be a prototype for a N64 skiing game by Paradigm Entertainment, where the player could have took control of Paradigm’s mascott, Egghead, a weird egg with “punk” hair. There are not many more details about this, but EggHead was shown with an interactive video at SIGGRAPH 1994 / 1996 (?) where the audience controlled the game with a motion sensing technology.
The people in the room were able to move their hands left / right, up / down and get a corresponding movement with the image on the screen. You can read more about this show at the Cinematrix website. The game was never released and probably it was just created as a tech demo for the SIGGRAPH show and it was not really meant to be a Nintendo 64 game.
As we can read from BW Online, Paradigm Simulations created the game as an offshoot of defense work. Also, as noticed by Hibana, EggHead Shred was featured on the Nickelodeon variety show “U to U” in the mid-1990’s:
“Egghead Shred” by Paradigm – This game had the audience playing a punk-rock “Humpty Dumpty-like” character as he skied his way down a obstacle-laden slope of frying pans and vicious forks (no kidding!). The stunning graphics were produced by a host of Silicon Graphics Reality Engine-based workstations while the audience utilized the Cinematrix IAP as the control interface.
It would be nice to find a video from this U2U episode to see Eddhead in motion.
Thanks a lot to Gilgamesh, Zach and Hibana for the contributions!
Images:
Video:
Wii Drums [Wii – Tech Demo]
Wii drums was a tech demo which was playable at the E3 2006. It was titled then as another part of Wii Music, aside the orchestra game but at E3 2006 was the last time it has been seen since. Wii drums featured a two player jam sessions like mechanic in which players hold two wii remotes each and have to move the wii remote to bash the onscreen drums whilst simoultaneously having to hold different buttons to switch between them to create a different sounding beat. Satori Iwata speculated after E3 2006 to Official Nintendo Magazine that Wii Drums was at the time a tech demo made to show off one of the many things the wii remote could simulate. He added to that “That was not only to give the public a better understanding of the new technology but to show third-party developers what opportunities there are”. With that said, it makes me think this is perhaps what inspired Sega to bring back Samba de Amigo on the wii as it uses a similar gameplay mechanic.
Below is one of the few videos you can find of wii drums in action: