The biggest eurodemo event of the year, Assembly, is over, the demos are posted so I checked them out and you know what.....they mostly suck 😞

Many people have complained about this. The problem is it used to be about making the computer do something you didn't think was possible. Real time bump−mapping, real time meta−balls, real time ray tracing etc, real time water. But now everybody has a descent 3D card and most demos are just random abstract 3D blobs rotating in space. Woo hoo! Like it's about 3 calls to DirectX to do it. OpenScreen(), LoadModel(), DrawModel().

Okay so maybe it should be more about design now than tech. Fine, but slowly spinning tenticle blobs with random images over them are just ... boring. Once in a while if the music kicks it can be okay.

I downloaded the top couple in each category. The only one worth looking at is VARIFORM because it does some cool effects I haven't seen.

Otherwise now they are admiting pre−rendered videos and there were two that were interesting.

Project Kerosene is cool student project.

The animation that took 1st place is this one, the Way Out. If you've been in the scene for a while you'll understand why it took 1st. If not you probably won't get it.