Giant GIFs of Molecular Reality
The giant GIFs of Molecular Reality are animated GIF files of 25 to 193 megabytes, the largest image files in the web storage of Molecular Reality Corporation. Two of them are 1920 by 1080 pixels and loop without end: a 15-second sizzle reel for Maxine's Quest, of 193,094,257 bytes, and a 17-second tutorial for the older MR1 Molecular Streaming Device, of 156,831,361 bytes.[1] The public repository of the open MR1 Nanopore Reader holds two more, with a video file of the same name beside each.[2]
The files
| File | Size | Pixels | Frames | Length | Shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sizzle reel for Maxine's Quest | 193.1 MB | 1920 × 1080 | 456 | 15.21 s | Gameplay: a purple circular arena, ghosts and snakes, and a pink clay oscilloscope |
| Loading animation for the MR1 handheld | 156.8 MB | 1920 × 1080 | 403 | 16.81 s | Three steps: "1. Add sample", "2. Snap on Fluid Cell", "3. Play Molecular Games!" |
| Orbit render, MR1 Nanopore Reader | 74.2 MB | 1280 × 720 | 300 | 9.00 s | A render of an unbuilt design |
| Exploded fly-through, MR1 Nanopore Reader | 68.3 MB | 1280 × 720 | 300 | 9.00 s | A render of an unbuilt design: the cartridge plates |
| Molecular streaming interface | 40.5 MB | 1920 × 1080 | 353 | 11.78 s | A page headed MOLECULAR STREAMING with a search box, over a kaleidoscope of protein shapes |
| Title sting of Epic Quest Bio | 25.3 MB | 1280 × 720 | 145 | 6.05 s | The box-art painting dissolving into the title |
[a] Smaller one by one, the 197 animations of Iridian, each 640 pixels square and 20 seconds long, weigh 807.6 MB together. The largest of them is 21.8 MB.[1]
Both of the large files date from December 18, 2025. A second copy of the loading animation, identical byte for byte, was uploaded on February 6, 2026, which puts 313.7 MB of this one clip in the company's storage.[1]
The format
The Graphics Interchange Format dates from June 15, 1987, when a team at CompuServe released it. A frame holds up to 256 colors, picked from a palette of 24-bit entries, and the pixels are stored as indexes into that palette.[3] They are squeezed with the Lempel-Ziv-Welch method of 1984, which loses nothing.[4] The main American patent on that method ran out on June 20, 2003, and the last of the others in 2004. GIF89a added per-frame delays and transparency, and a Netscape extension of 1995 added looping, in which a count of zero means forever.[3]
Each of the two large files has a single palette of 256 colors and a loop count of zero. The two renders in the repository differ: of their 300 frames, 299 have a palette of their own, and with no looping block each plays once, in nine seconds, and stops.[1]
The format counts the delay of a frame in hundredths of a second, which cannot express 30 frames per second. The sizzle reel gives 303 frames a delay of 3 and 153 frames a delay of 4, an average of 29.98 frames per second. The loading animation gives 334 frames a delay of 4 and 69 frames a delay of 5, an average of 23.97.[1]
Weight
At one byte per pixel, the 456 frames of the sizzle reel would fill 945,561,600 bytes. The file is about a fifth of that: 423,000 bytes per frame, 12.7 megabytes for every second of animation, about 102 megabits per second.
In the repository, the orbit render of 74,154,292 bytes and the fly-through of 68,319,202 bytes each have a WebM video of the same name beside them. The videos weigh 498,451 and 680,355 bytes, about 150 and 100 times less, and run at 1280 by 720 pixels and 30 frames per second.[2]
See also
Notes
- ^ The sizes, dimensions, frame counts and delays are read from the files themselves.