elevated by Rgba & TBC | 4k intro (FullHD 1080p demoscene demo)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Held up as the landmark demoscene production and a counterpoint to software bloat.
What it is
Elevated by Rgba and TBC, the winner of the 4k intro compo at Breakpoint 2009. It is a realtime procedurally generated 3D flythrough with music, all in a 4096-byte executable.
Recommended by 7 HN commenters across 10 different months, 2013 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec userbinator · 2015-04 · on “Code Inflation [pdf]”
Those who don't see anything unusual or wasteful about an 8KB+ executable whose only action is to exit and return a value are recommended to watch this demo generated in realtime by a 4KB executable: [this video] There's more here: [LINK] The demoscene is basically the exact opposite of mainstream software culture, and although it's focused on multimedia shows, I think some of their techniques and underlying motivation could be applied more generally... I wonder if /bin/true and /bin/false in their most simplest forms even meet the minimum "requirement for creativity" to be copyrightable, and if the reason why it has bloated significantly is so that it could be.
Strong rec jsheard · 2016-06 · on “Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released”
Release info: [LINK] Binary: [LINK] Video: [this video] Everything you see and hear is procedurally generated by the 4096 byte executable, in real time. It still blows my mind 7 years after release...
Strong rec M4v3R · 2016-11 · on “Making graphics in 4 kilobytes (2008) [pdf]”
Obligatory link to Elevated - a 4 kilobytes animated 3D demo with music by rgba (authors of PDF in the OP) & TBC: [this video] For me, achieving something like this in 4k is just mindblowing.
Strong rec userbinator · 2017-05 · on “How a 64k intro is made”
Here is another page on distance functions... [LINK] ...written by one of the authors of this amazing 4k ( four kilobytes! ) demo: [this video]
Strong rec twic · 2019-11 · on “Ask HN: Who are your programming rockstars, and why?”
Inigo Quilez, a demoscene programmer who does amazing work - of a very high technical and artistic standard, often in painfully tiny sizes - and then writes lucidly about it: [LINK] Here's 'Elevated' a four-kilobyte demo he did (along with others): [this video] And here's the writeup: [LINK]
Strong rec duskwuff · 2020-04 · on “Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage”
The 4k category was blown wide open in 2009 by rgba/tbc with Elevated [1] (live reactions: [2]). It demonstrated that 4k was more than sufficient for impressive effects and music -- suddenly, 64k was no longer an interesting constraint. [1]: [this video] [2]: [LINK]
Strong rec onename · 2025-05 · on “Inigo Quilez: computer graphics, mathematics, shaders, fractals, demoscene”
When I want to show people what an intro is and tell them a bit about the demoscene, I usually show them the intro Elevated, which won the PC 4k compo at Breakpoint 2009. For me it really shows the talent of Iq and the other people who created it. It’s truly amazing what can be done in just 4 kilobyte! Elevated by Rgba & TBC: [this video] Iq's slides on the Elevated intro: [LINK] Sourcecode: [LINK]
Recommends david-given · 2015-05 · on “Voxel Quest Fluid Dynamics and New Rendering Method”
The maths isn't hard, but you do need a decent grasp of vectors and (optionally) 3D transformation matrices, and it's pretty opaque until you figure out the terminology. I haven't done GPU raymarching myself but I've used the same techniques on the CPU side in order to develop a whole-planet procedural renderer (in Ada, of course); the raymarching was relatively straightforward but I got horribly bogged down trying to make a volumetric atmosphere work. One resource I found really useful was Iñigo Quilez' website; in particular, his article on basic terrain raymarching explains most of the concepts: [LINK] (Also known as iq, he's responsible for a number of amazing demos, including the 4kB de