RIP, Dawn: NVIDIA Removes Its Sexiest GeForce Tech Demos

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Images: NVIDIA

The fine folks at r/NVIDIA and /g/ have spotted something peculiar on NVIDIA’s GeForce Tech Demos page. For some reason, all of the female-centric demos (sans 2019’s “Justice”) have been scrapped from the site. These include memorable demos such as Dawn (forest fairy), Nalu (mermaid), and Medusa (snake-headed woman).

It isn’t clear why these were removed, but the decision appears to be recent. We pulled up captures for NVIDIA’s Geforce Tech Demos page on Wayback Machine and found that the demos were still present on September 21, which means that they were probably removed just a few days ago. The cached links to the original executables still appear to be active, though, which means that archivers won’t need to go hunting. We’ve copied a few of the most notable ones below.

A New Dawn

  • Release Date: July 23, 2012
  • Originally released for: GeForce GTX 600-Series Graphics Cards

“Demonstrating the power of tessellation before game developers widely adopted it, A New Dawn featured geometric and environmental detail that gamers had only dreamed of, and debuted an early version of the tech that would later be known as “HairWorks”, as seen in The Witcher 3.” Download

Nalu

  • Released July 21, 2004
  • Originally released for: GeForce 6-Series Graphics Cards

“This demo showed Nalu [Hawaiian for wave] stopping to admire a creature of the deep as it ascended towards the water’s surface. It demonstrated how the current GPUs could render the soft shading of her long hair and the soft shadows on her skin.” Download

Dawn

  • Released May 1, 2003
  • Originally released for: GeForce FX-Series Graphics Cards

“In this enchanted forest lived the prettiest pixie to ever grace the computer screen (and who would be re-born for “A New Dawn” many years later).” Download

Dusk

  • Released March 1, 2003
  • Originally released for: GeForce FX-Series Graphics Cards

“In Dusk, the titular character relaxed on a moonlit street outside of a nightclub as she danced with her fellow creatures of the night.” Download

NVIDIA’s most recent tech demos are Reflections, Atomic Heart, and Justice. These were developed to showcase the incredible potential of ray-traced effects, which the GeForce RTX 20 Series heralded. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll definitely want to check out Reflections, which features Captain Phasma and Stormtroopers.

Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

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