THE VIDEO SHELF · demoscene terrain rendering

Mars DOS demo by Tim Clarke (1993)

A one-minute capture of Tim Clarke's 1993 'Mars' DOS demo, a roughly 5 KB program that renders a navigable terrain landscape in real time.

Why HN readers recommended it

Remembered fondly as a tiny, efficient demo that inspired graphics programmers and is a benchmark for modern terrain rendering.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

Second Reality was the best. First demo that I saw was Spaceballs' State of the art [LINK] and I vividly remember of thinking 'wtf is that, a video or what?' and then Second Reality a year later or so - [LINK] But then (I look …
Keyframe on Hacker News · 2016-06
In Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
It's amazing what people achieved with the resources of the '80s, creating fairly enjoyable visuals using extremely limited technology. Another example from the early '90s is MARS.COM (1) by Tim Clarke (1993). Just 6 kilobytes and 30+ fps on a 12MHZ 286 (2). 1. [VIDEO] …
reconnecting on Hacker News · 2025-07
In MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.