Three other incredible demos were shown. The first (on video) featured a giant 'polygon heavy' robot stomping around a metal arena before splitting in two to reveal a female 'driver'. The two characters then performed a beautifully co-ordinated sequence of moves, accompanied by a suitably kicking soundtrack. The second demo was even more impressive, with a highly detailed (and highly polished) desk serving as a virtual playground - everything on and around the desk could be manipulated in real-time. At one point, Allard set the Newton's Cradle in motion, along with a bizarre mobile situated just above and behind. The real-time shadows and lighting effects on the chrome balls were unlike anything we at Future Gamer have ever seen.

As if that wasn't enough, zooming the view out slightly revealed all manner of activity, with no less than 10 objects moving realistically and casting believable shadows. The third demo demonstrated X-Box's real-time physics capabilities. A ping-pong ball was dropped into a room filled with mousetraps. Each mousetrap had a ping-pong ball on top and soon all hell broke loose, with balls and mousetraps flying around all over the place, each with remarkable physics, shadows and motion-blur effects. Truly remarkable stuff.

An NVIDIA GeForce 256 provided the graphical muscle for demonstration purposes, although Allard pointed out that the final X-Box will use a far more powerful model. "This is NVIDIA's '10' series in action - if the next NVIDIA card is the '15', we're talking about the X-Box using a '20'." That's two generations on from the current cutting-edge 3D accelerator! Not bad, eh? A 64-channel 3D soundcard is also to be included, although specific details and indeed the supplier are yet to be announced.