If you haven't seen this already, do yourself a favor and check out the screenshots of NVIDIA's human head demo. And if you've got a card powerful enough to run the demo, take the time to download it and see the impressive visuals for yourself. Here's the scoop directly from the source...
"Our latest demo, "Human Head" is now available to the public. This demo is a startling leap forward in realism for real-time characters, starring actor Doug Jones, who will portray the Silver Surfer in the upcoming film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. You can compare "Human Head" with the real Doug Jones here: http://www.thedougjonesexperience.com/NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra demo "Human Head" uses a new sum-of-Guassians formulation of subsurface scattering within a multi-layered skin model coupled to deliver a startling leap forward in realism for real-time characters. "Human Head" computes 17 off-screen textures every frame totaling over 40 Million pixels, each shaded with lengthy pixel shaders That amounts to 1.2 billion pixels every second! Ultra high resolution 4096 x 4096 color and normal textures provide photo-realistic detail even at extremely close ranges."
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
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