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#demoscene#voxel#dos

Mars DOS demo by Tim Clarke (1993)

Sean Barrett

12K subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2025.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

27K views13 years ago2 recommendations

Graphics and audioHistory and cultureRenderingRetro computingAlgorithms

A capture of Tim Clarke's 1993 Mars demo, a five-kilobyte DOS program that renders a navigable 3D terrain in real time.

Tim Clarke's "Mars" demo from 1993 (5 KB) pouet.net/prod.php?which=4662

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Celebrated by graphics programmers as an inspiring early example of highly optimized real-time terrain rendering in a tiny executable.

Keyframeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released”

Second Reality was the best. First demo that I saw was Spaceballs' State of the art link and I vividly remember of thinking 'wtf is that, a video or what?' and then Second Reality a year later or so - link But then (I look all and every demo out there by then at the age of 13) I saw Mars demo link to this video which hooked me forever on the path of graphics programming.
View on Hacker News

reconnectingon Hacker News • Recommends

On “MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today”

It's amazing what people achieved with the resources of the '80s, creating fairly enjoyable visuals using extremely limited technology. Another example from the early '90s is MARS.COM (1) by Tim Clarke (1993). Just 6 kilobytes and 30+ fps on a 12MHZ 286 (2). 1. link to this video 2. link
View on Hacker News

cousin_iton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Voxel.css”

Voxels are the most expensive way to model a 3D shape, and browser CSS is the slowest way to render a 3D shape. These two were made for each other. The next step is to reimplement the Mars DOS demo 1 using voxels in the browser, and marvel at the slowdown compared to 1993. It's discouraging that we're supposed to cheer for progress even when it's headed backwards. 1 link to this video
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marcusjton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Terrain rendering algorithm in less than 20 lines of code”

Here's a video of it in action, for those unfamiliar, the poster had also included a link to its location at Pouet link to this video
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velosolon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands”

Thinking about demos brought me right back to probably one of the first things I downloaded, the 'controllable' Mars demo 1,2. I zoomed around that landscape in the way a child can pour hours into what anyone older would view as painfully repetitive. Based on the YT comments it's been done at shadertoy too: link 1: link 2: link to this video
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