This video shows proof that Intel faked their CES 2012 ultrabook gaming demo: Mooley Eden said someone was driving a F1 car game backstage while in fact they were just playing a video clip.
Eden—head for Intel's PC group—was touting the power of their Ivy Bridge-based ultrabooks. He pretended to be driving F1 2011, a very 3D graphics intensive racing game. At the end of his 30 second demo he made a joke and said that he wasn't really driving the car, but someone backstage was driving.
That was the big fat lie: the only thing that was demonstrated was VLC, a video playback software running a pre-recorded demo clip. Nobody was actually playing the game in a computer. The game wasn't even running. You can see the VLC control window appearing clearly at the beginning of this video.
Does this mean that these ultrabooks are not capable of running advanced games like this? Perhaps. F1 2011 requires a lot of 3D horsepower that I doubt any ultranotebook can provide at this point at full detail. Or most probably this was just an off-site demo recorded on video to avoid any potential hiccups on stage.
In any case, shame on Eden for trying to fool everyone. Fortunately, Bright Side of News' Anshel Sag got their lie. [Bright Side of News]
Update 2: Intel wrote to us saying that they successfully showed the game running in real hardware in a private demo for some press outlets.
Update: Some people are saying that running pre-recorded videos and make them pass as real demos is ok. They argue that that many companies show pre-recorded demos in fear their technology will fail on stage. And they accept it!
The fact is that, if you don't have the balls to play with your technology on a stage, then your tech is not really ready for deployment. It's too fragile.
We—the journalists and the consumers—should call them out. Not apologize for them. Demos should be live. Otherwise, just play a video and say it's a video, not a demo. The fact is that you will never have any backstage people to switch to a second computer when your computer crashes. And pretending you are playing while a video plays is boring.
Don't accept the beta culture. We all should demand reality and never defend companies faking it because "that's what they all do". —JD.