Nvision 2008: NVScene - The latest demoscene party in the USA

At events like the Breakpoint in Germany, thousands of fans meet to spend all day on programming incredible graphics demos. The contributions of the 4 KB Intro section for example are only 4 KiByte big and create real-time animations and effects that some modern game engines are not capable of.

The NVScene at the Nvision 08 offered a competition and lectures about the demoscene community. We talked to Ekkehard Brüggemann of the Verein für Digitale Kultur (Association for Digital Art), who is a member of the team behind the NVScene.

PC Games Hardware: What did graphics fans and programmers think of the NVScene?

Ekkehard Brüggemann: Considering that there never has been a demoscene party in the USA before, we received a lot of contributions for a debut: 34 releases overall, 15 demos and 19 4 KB intros.

PC Games Hardware: Where are the competitors from? Were they mostly American or were there people from the European scene, too?

Ekkehard Brüggemann: We are international - about a half of the participators is from the USA, the other half comes from Europe. Those are estimated numbers, we do not have the official ones, yet. The competition itself was quite international too, although we had two demos from the USA only. The demoscene is still quite unknown around here, but we are trying to change that.

PC Games Hardware: In Europe events like the Breakpoint are some real parties. Here in the USA there are some little restrictions, like no beer, since there are minors on the NVScene, too. What is your impression?

Ekkehard Brüggemann: The atmosphere around here is, even without the beer, very, very cool too. Compared to European parties with their mixture of Woodstock and LAN party, things around here are a little more decent, but the level of professionalism is very high on the other hand. Because of the many high quality lectures, the NVScene can be seen as a public demoscene convention more or less.

PC Games Hardware: There are many big hardware and software companies present at the NVision. Do they pay a visit and say something about the NVScene sometimes?

Ekkehard Brüggemann: The feedback from the professional side is just incredible. For many people, among them are the inventor of the animation and effect tool Houdini and several employees of Pixar and Maxis who are working on Spore currently, the NVScene has been the best part of the NVision.

PC Games Hardware: Thank you for your time.

A list of all the winners and all the downloadable demos is offered by Nvidia. The winner of the 4 KB competition for example - since "Texas” of the group Keyboarders requires DX 10 there is a 211MByte avi file, too. The best demo "Stargazer” by Orb & Andromeda, is another impressive piece of art.