I plan on making it SM3.0 level stuff, nothing less. Of course, for those with older cards I plan to have a Divx of the demo as well.

The demo i'm planning sould run on a gforce 3; I'm going for content...

I agree 100% with tim about the cards thing. While I dont think there should nessicarily be RESTRICTIONS per se, I think that it is ridiculous to develop demos that will ONLY run on 6800's or 5950's or 9800 pros, etc, etc. It really isn't cool at all. The mark of a good coder is how much he can squeeze out of the resources given to him, not how good he is at spending money to have the absolute latest technology on his/her machine! I am almost 100$ positive that a producer would rather have a coder who can do Very Good effects on 90% of consumer machines than a coder who can make Excellent effects that only run on 10% of consumer machines.

My computer is 2 years old... it came with integrated graphics and I upgraded it to a 4MX 440(Geforce2 class) about a year ago

My dads computer is 1.5 years old, and it came with a 4MX 420

The entry-mid level computers sold at dell right now either come with integrated graphics or an FX 5200.

even look at supposedly the pinnacle of gfx tech nowadays, DOOM 3. While you need to have a kickin card to see ALL of the effects at 1200*1600, the game is certainly playable with a Geforce2 : it even says it right on the box!

I think that I would have much more respect for someone who made a jaw-dropping demo with OpenGL 1.1 than with SM3.0.

I know that I for one will be targeting Geforce2 :)

I think that while people should do

So i guess the general consensus on the card thing is to make no restrictions? Everyone agree?

I think we need to discuss is judging (that way we can establish a general Idea on what type of machine will be judging the entries - important if there are no hardware restrictions); should it be the same as the last contests or do we have other options?

Note:
It would be bad if we tried to do a public thing only to have it turn out like the Apocalypse contest (where ppl voted twice). So far the judging has been very fair and I'm satasfied with the results.

I'm not going to complain whether or not there are any restrictions on the level of hardware needed to code a demo. However, I would like to remind the entrants who are basing their entire entries on the latest advancements in 3d graphics, that restrictions set you free. When you have guidelines, you are much more likely to be creative than if you don't. If you want to make some jawsome looking water, and you can't use pixel shaders, you're going to have to think up some other method, and if it works, people (especially those with not-so-great video cards) will have a far greater respect for you.

No restrictions is cool :)
I have 2 machines
One with a Radeon 9800, and another with a
Gerbil force 4 MX (No fragment shaders, vertex emulated (I think))
I do most of my programming on the GF MX :)

I just hope a demo written to run on an old card wins the competition... preferably mine :) (If I get my arse in gear and finally decide to enter the competition this time!)

Of course there should not be any restriction at all. Everyone's free to use SGI-specific extensions that only work on workstations, but keep in mind that less people will be able to appreciate the work.

I for one had always targeted the most wide range possible. In fact, all my demos run on OpenGL1.0-compatible graphics cards (well, maybe 1.1 because of MS Windows, but that's off-topic). The thing being, if one's graphics card doesn't support fancy pixel shaders, then use a fallback path ... which obviously doesn't look as good, but at least RUNS on the machine. For instance, in my T^3 entry (for the TTT contest) the bump mapping on the ring runs on all machines. I've run into 4 classes of hardware :
1- ATI_fragment_shader supported : render the ring with very high specular exponent,
2- NV_register_combiners : render the ring with high specular exponent (here I don't make the diff between GF1-2 and GF3-4 which has different NV_rc capabilities),
3- DOT3 supported : render the ring with a low specular exponent,
4- DOT3 not supported : render a flat ring.

I don't know about you all, but I feel very frustrated when someone double-clicks on my EXE and the program doesn't start. It's so unfair not to show the demo besides the fancy effects. IMHO the demo is not fully based on the effects, there are many other interesting things like music, scenario, etc which don't require a GF6800 and still are nice to see.

jm4c (because it's a long post)

I've seen a lot of discussion surrounding the post nuclear war theme. If you watched the presidental debate last night, Bush said his greatest fear was that a terriorist can get a hold of a nuclear weapon and use it! (Bush, 2004). I think we should play on that fear, and center the theme on the aftermath of that nightmare.

I was thinking of going for "the wow factor"; do you know when you see a new building that is "wak" (def: very inovative) and your jaw drops...I was thinking of doing a demo that is kinda similar.

That said, my city will be futuristic...

btw; what will the new contest be called?

Mine will be in the present...assuming that is the theme that Jeff picks up. We gotta wait and see.