demoeffect: n. [demoscene] What among hackers is called a
display hack. Classical effects include "plasma" (colorful mess),
"keftales" (x*x+y*y and other similar patterns, usually combined
with color-cycling), realtime fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc.
Historically, demo effects have cheated as much as possible to gain
more speed and more complexity, using low-precision math and masses
of assembler code and building animation realtime are three common
tricks, but use of special hardware to fake effects is a Good
Thing on the demoscene (though this is becoming less common as
platforms like the Amiga fade away).
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