While the final result will only last a minute or so, the process of making the demo took something on the order of eight months from start to finish. Thanks to NVIDIA’s regular releases of new GPUs, the art of constructing a demo has become a nearly constant process, with this most recent batch following the ones built to demonstrate the GeForce FX family of GPUs. NVIDIA has a dedicated demo team that takes on these challenges and puts them into motion as detailed, real-time 3D presentations.

“As soon as we finish a set of demos, our weekly meetings become brainstorming sessions,” said Eugene d’Eon, one of the engineers behind “Clear Sailing.” “Artists do sketches of things—characters, scenes, and other ideas—and bring everything to the table once a week for everyone to discuss and get excited about. One of our artists had come up with some sketches of a pirate ship on the ocean at night that were very interesting.”

The demos, as expected, go through many changes. It can be as subtle as the facial structure of a character or as drastic as changing the “story” that makes a demo more of a mini-vignette than just a technology presentation. With Clear Sailing, the final result of a single ship in the water came after numerous changes, and the massive, multi-masted ship was not the center of attention at the beginning.

“It actually started more based around the ship's captain,” d’Eon revealed, “a character who would be inside the cabin, withh soft shadow lighting and things rocking back and forth. That evolved into going outside the pirate ship to do the ocean.”

“We wanted to have a long camera shot of flying across the ocean, in toward the ship, and ultimately through the window,” recalled Joe Demers, an engineer on the project. “Once it was inside, you’d see the Captain in his element. I think there was going to be an attack by skeletons or something like that—it was really out there. A lot of these ideas really start as pie-in-the-sky; really wacky things that get cut down into manageable chunks.

“We debated for a while whether it was going to be a demo of the captain and the room he was in, or if it was going to be something else,” Demers continued. “Eventually we decided on doing the exterior because it would be a cool environment for him to be in. We could have done a demo of that just that room, with a lot of complexity and vision to it. Characters are, of course, very easy to spend all your graphics power on. I think we decided to do the exterior in part because most of our audience resonates better with attractive women instead of crinkly old men—though we still want to do that kind of character.”

Demers also said that the plan for the ship battle was “going to be a bigger event, with two ships firing on each other, and one was going to catch fire.” However, as the demo complexity increased, so did the engineering requirements—especially with what’s involved in creating realistic-looking fire compared to the amount of time available to complete the demo—so the decision was made to streamline the whole presentation by limiting the action to mainly one craft. He also noted with a laugh that it’s somewhat farfetched for a ship to catch fire in a cannon battle, a myth that’s been perpetuated by dramatic scenes in movies.