[MDGeist]

As an outsider myself this was my assumption for why the demoscene is not the same as it once was, the hardware constraints are no the same as in the 90s. That being said I kind of look at the demo reels for new versions of Unreal Engine as a sort of modern incarnation of pushing the limits.

[leptons]

Take a look at the 64K and lower demos that are still very much a technical challenge and show off a lot of programming skill.

https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B%5D=64k&page=1

There's even a 32 byte demo category. What can someone do that's interesting in 32 bytes? Not a lot, but they still do it. 64K, 8k, and 4k compos are still alive and well on modern platforms and they are just as amazing as they used to be.