"Specifically, this demo uses DirectCompute [...] per-pixel or per-tile list of lights that forward-render based shaders use for lighting each pixel."

Now call me a cynic, but is this not pretty much exactly what Damian Trebilco did 5 years ago on 3 generation older hardware using nothing but the CPU and some stencil buffer trick?

Admittedly, Damian's demo with that horse model inside a room was not quite as artistic. The ATI demo sure is kind of funny, with a nice story, well done animations, and it looks quite good, but honestly I couldn't tell it really looks a class better than a thousand other demos (in fact, all of the characters are quite "plastic like" though of course the ATI guys will claim that this is intentional). Opposed to that, unlike a thousand other demos, it requires the lastest, fastest hardware to run...

"Specifically, this demo uses DirectCompute [...] per-pixel or per-tile list of lights that forward-render based shaders use for lighting each pixel."

Now call me a cynic, but is this not pretty much exactly what Damian Trebilco did 5 years ago on 3 generation older hardware using nothing but the CPU and some stencil buffer trick?

Admittedly, Damian's demo with that horse model inside a room was not quite as artistic. The ATI demo sure is kind of funny, with a nice story, well done animations, and it looks quite good, but honestly I couldn't tell it really looks a class better than a thousand other demos. Opposed to that, unlike a thousand other demos, it requires the lastest, fastest hardware to run...