Hey PC Techies, how in a flying newts bridal bath is this possible?!!

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 17:45

http://www.theproduct.de/

In here there are some graphical demos that are pretty impressive, they use my 3d card to its fullest... nice music usage too, some with vocals.... these demos process almost 2 gigabytes worth of data, there is only one thing out of the ordinary about them. THEY ARE only 64KB!!!

According to their site they have a compression ratio of 30,000:1.... so let me get this straight in my head... if that kind of compression become publically available... Then a person would be able to download every song ever recorded onto a floppy disk, and easily copy it to their friends.... nay they could put several DVDs on a floppy... this would finish the music industry, and don't forget the internet possiblities... fully 3d accelerated webpages download almost instantly 56k or smaller modems?!!!

If they can put 2 GB of information into 64kb imagine how much information could be stored on a regular 4.5 GB DVD, 700MB CD, hell zip disk....

As of now they are not selling this technology to anyone.

You maybe I might be able to fathom it better if just the demo is 64kb... however, this 64kb includes the program, a kick a$$ synthesizer, the decompressor, and the necessary programming to communicate with windows and modern video cards!!?!!

CAN SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM A HEARTATTACK OVER DISBELIEF, HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!!!

I mean data is stored in bytes... they would have to be storing information millions of time smaller then bytes, plus complicated algorithms, but how would that work with a windows program, geez I didn't even think there were windows programs anymore that were as small as 64kb.

$hit my papers for school take up about 32kb....

Help me I am very very very lost....

Winston · December 11, 2003, 17:54

Simple, they took a black hole and put it on a floppy, then copied to C:\Windows\ and from there it was plain sailing.

Hueij · December 11, 2003, 17:55

Yeah, a friend of mine mailed me one of their movies. It was really amazing, over 5 minutes 3d in only 64kB.

But don't ask me how they did it

Oh, about small windows programs? I use Eyedropper every day and it's only 26kB

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 18:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Winston
Simple, they took a black hole and put it on a floppy, then copied to C:\Windows\ and from there it was plain sailing.

That sounds more reasonable then their explanation....

Alex · December 11, 2003, 18:06

wow, i admit i'm impressed with this.

Combat Ingrid · December 11, 2003, 18:06

Very impressive!

My guess is that this program doesn't really contain the information seen on the screen, but rather tells the computer to generate the shapes and textures. Like "make a ball with this diameter and fill it with a mix of this and that colour". If you think about it, the textures are actually extremely simple and repetitive, and so is the music

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 18:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Combat Ingrid
Very impressive!

My guess is that this program doesn't really contain the information seen on the screen, but rather tells the computer to generate the shapes and textures. Like "make a ball with this diameter and fill it with a mix of this and that colour". If you think about it, the textures are actually extremely simple and repetitive, and so is the music

You know maybe I could understand that... kinda like programming in assembly (machine code), but there is one bit of a problem with this theory.... you would need a large frontend to interpret the generator... and both of those are built into that 64kb!!?

Whoha · December 11, 2003, 18:14

First off they probably had their compression thing sitting there for a month or so looking for the best possible compression.

Second doing win32 gui stuff is pretty cheap on executable size.

third they might be doing some stuff with libraries that are already on the computer.

Other then that, pure black magic, burn the witches.

mrmitchell · December 11, 2003, 18:15

Wowza.

Az · December 11, 2003, 18:15

Combat Ingrid's theory is the most reasonable. well, almost. That black hole...

Az · December 11, 2003, 18:24

still, how the ****... all of the grafic engine ( Half Life quality, me think) ... the music is explainable.. somehow...

VERY IMPRESSIVE.

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 18:24

Right I watched the demo again... the compression ratio according to them is actually not 8000:1 like I said, but 30,000:1.....

Still the instructions necessary to tell a computer how to draw that detailed of stuff would take up megabytes..... that black hole... best theory.

mrmitchell · December 11, 2003, 18:28

Although, I wonder how large it would be if you added EVERYTHING they use--for example, directx, etc. It would of course balloon.

Ben Kenobi · December 11, 2003, 18:33

Quote:

That black hole

Not hard to store information...

I'd want to see how they extract the data.

Az · December 11, 2003, 18:39

Well, obviously, various drivers are used. But still... I wasn't aware that there is a graphic engine lying around in windows.

Traianvs · December 11, 2003, 19:01

Quote:

fiver2 had the idea not to store the pixel data of the textures, but the commands that were needed to create them. by using this method, we were able to recreate natural and artificial reality in 64 kilobytes, instead of creating abstract blob and envi textures.

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 19:10

That still doesn't make sense... you would need lines and lines of code in order to do this that would take up huge amounts of space...

Sarxis · December 11, 2003, 19:14

Sounds like a game demo, where the saved recording isn't anything but basic instructions, and the game itself later regenerates all the necessary graphics and sounds.

Traianvs · December 11, 2003, 19:15

yeah but 64kb lines of code is a a lot already I think

Az · December 11, 2003, 19:35

don't forget that you need a compiler for that code, too.

MattH · December 11, 2003, 19:52

Read the FAQ:

Quote:

with your technology you could compress a dvd to a floppy disk!
you got it all wrong. .the .product is not about compression, it's about generation. we can only "compress" data generated with our tool.

edit: oops, missed Combat.

Wraith · December 11, 2003, 19:59

Their compression claims are bullshit. That level of compression isn't even theoretically possible. It's probably a hand-coded assembly demo that's generating the graphics on the fly.

There's actually a contest for this sort of thing. I don't have the time to track down the link right now, but I'll try to do so tomorrow night.

Wraith
If it were easy to understand, we wouldn't call it code.

Thorn · December 11, 2003, 20:08

Quote:

Their compression claims are bullshit. That level of compression isn't even theoretically possible. It's probably a hand-coded assembly demo that's generating the graphics on the fly.

Yeah I know, it makes no logical sense how compression like that could work unless it was some sort of organic program that could grow itself (by randomization??) back to form perfectly with minimal coding (sorta like a special kind of virus I forget the name).

As for generating the graphics on the fly, it would take an excess of processing power to do this in a reasonable amount of time (and this demo which utilizes graphic abilites that consume all the resources on a video card) does it faster then most 3d accelerated games load. However, if it is assembly it still should be ****ing huge (not as big as mapped textures) not 64kb....

Q Classic · December 11, 2003, 22:22

it's a big thing in europe from what i remember. it was in a scandinavian country this year.

Urban Ranger · December 12, 2003, 00:10

I don't have time to look at this now, but I agree with Wraith. If it sounds too good to be true, it is very likely that it is.

Sarxis · December 12, 2003, 02:27

I showed it to a programming friend, and he says its just Assembly.

Hurricane · December 12, 2003, 03:10

Look for "Combined 64k intro" to get some files. Or why not look for something even smaller. For example, this file is only 4Kb

laurentius · December 12, 2003, 04:39

ftp://ftp.edome.net/events/assembly03

Take a look at Zoom3 at the combined_64k_intro folder

Mr. Harley · December 12, 2003, 05:28

Actually, windows has all kinds of embedded applications. Microsoft generates wads of money selling programmers the tools to use them. Microsoft's tools tend to produce bloated programs. All this company needed to do was program in assembler language while making the correct system calls to Windows to generate much of their output. Please understand, "all they needed" is still pretty impressive. Coding in assembler is slow, boring, and tedious. 64kb of assembler is alot of assembler coding. If Microsoft wasn't interested in extracting every last dime out of Windows, instead of making a good operating system, they could pull things off like this too (generate something like 1.9 billion in profits on 2.1 billion in revenue - figure the markup).

Urban Ranger · December 12, 2003, 05:43

shawn,

You have to understand that a lot of MS employees are at least partly pay by stock options and/or certificates, and this does not go against their expenses at all.