Nvidia, in order to demonstrate the power of 8800 series, has released three demos that use the full power of the GPU:

NVIDIA Demo: Adrianne

The Adrianne demo uses complex shading and deformation techniques typically reserved for offline-rendered animation. The GeForce 8800's unified shader architecture makes this possible by dynamically balancing any combination of vertex, geometry and pixel shading for maximum hardware acceleration. This same unified shader architecture works with all OpenGL, DirectX 9, and DirectX 10 titles.

Adrianne's skin shader is the most complex in the scene; 1,400 instructions per pixel, 15 render passes, five separate bump maps, and a complex, physically-based lighting model that simulates sub-surface scattering. The sub-surface scattering algorithm uses three separate skin layers and each layer has unique scattering properties. In addition to the skin, the hair shader is rendered with a complex anisotropic shader that simulates the highlight on the exterior of the hair and the highlight again as it is reflected and scattered through each shaft of hair.

The GeForce 8800 also enables more sophisticated GPU-accelerated character skinning, resulting in more life-like animations. Blendshapes, sculpt deformers, and skeletal-driven bump maps manipulate Adrianne's facial expressions and facilitate her body motions, including such details as Adrianne's shoulder blades moving beneath the skin of her back.

NVIDIA Demo: Box of Smoke

While we work on trapping an actual genie in a bottle, here's the next best thing - a box full of smoke. This demo not only shows the graphics horsepower of the GeForce 8800, but the computational horsepower as well. As you move the smoke generator within the box, the computational fluid dynamics simulation is being processed in real time on the GPU. Yes, all the Navier-Stokes equations associated with the smoke movement are being evaluated by the GPU!

This enables unprecedented performance for real-time fluid simulation. See how easily the smoke moves as you swirl the smoke generator.

Watch how vortices are generated as you quickly move the smoke ball through the volume. For a small surprise, press the "N" key to generate a familiar shape in the field of smoke. Hmmm, maybe there is a genie in there after all.

NVIDIA Demo: Froggy

Froggy is a bit high strung and loves nothing more than a deep-tissue massage for relaxation. Feel free to pull, slap, poke, prod and otherwise comfort him. You can even pull his eyelids if you think it'll help. (These massage techniques are not recommended for offline amphibians.)

The GeForce 8800's unified shader and our new streamout feature make all of this possible. The unified shader balances any combination of vertex, geometry and pixel shading for maximum hardware acceleration. This same unified shader architecture works with all OpenGL, DirectX 9, and DirectX 10 titles. Streamout allows the GPU to calculate the interactive, deforming skin of the frog. With older generation GPUs, this type of interactive GPU acceleration wasn't practical.

The skin shader is a modified version of the Adrianne skin shader with modified scattering properties derived from photos of real frog skin. The shader has high-detail bump and detail maps and a complex, physically-based lighting model that simulates sub-surface scattering.

In addition, the scene is rendered with high-quality supersampling for jaggy-free AA. Froggy's eyes are wet and shiny courtesy of a custom shader that raytraces the irises and simulates refraction. Froggy's world also includes dynamically-generated lights and shadows.