Intel showed their new Larrabee GPU publicly for the first time at their annual developer conference. They showed Larrabee running a ray tracer that was rendering QuakeWars geometry . The enthusiast scene (e.g. beyond3d ) was not impressed by this demo, because, frankly, it wasn't very impressive at an emotional level. The scene was static, no people in it, just waves and a few very small helicopters. It's strange that they didn't even move the camera, which is something that a ray tracing engine should easily be able to to. The camera angle they chose was effective for showing dynamic reflections, but keeping the camera locked down meant a much less interesting demo. For the same amount of effort they could have come up with a much more visually and emotionally interesting demo. For example, a cascade of brightly colored chrome balls tumbling down a staircase, which would show off both physics and ray tracing. That they didn't use this early opportunity to sell Larrab...
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If you have interesting things to share, why not share it with the whole planet?
(No offense to Google. I hate Facebook for this too...)
In defense of G+, at least you can share a public URL of a G+ discussion, so it's not completely walled off from non-G+-users.