Wonderful initiative 
!
Fully agreed! In fact, there’s another thing that nobody talks about anymore and which could be built around these samples (both basic and more advanced): how about creating a tech-demo for Panda3D? It could consist of multiple segments, with each of those segments showcasing a different type of gameplay, using one or more of the samples as its base.
It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while now, but never dared to suggest since I’m fully aware that this would be a very time-consuming undertaking. But now that I see that “stuff is about to get real”, it seems like a good time to talk about it.
Here are some general content-related ideas that I’ve been considering for a sci-fi-oriented demo:
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An intro, inside a hangar, where you see a starship being built – or repaired – by a bunch of drones that are floating around. This could make use of a sample that demonstrates procedural generation of geometry. As it happens, I have proposed such samples here.
This could be made to look really impressive, with lots of cool shader effects, showing off the capabilities of the engine. -
The first playable section of the demo, kind of like “Act 1”, where the completed starship flies out of the hangar and engages in space battles with enemy fighter ships. So this would be a flightsim-type segment with some form of aerial combat.
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Act 2: the starship docks at a partially destroyed, rotating space station and you, the pilot, walk through the corridors, looking around for clues about what happened there. This would be an adventure-type segment.
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Act 3: the player encounters hostile… (let your imagination run wild). This would be a shooter-type segment.
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Act 4 (end): the player discovers an alternate way to leave the space station, by moving through portals. This would be a puzzle-type segment.
As for the player’s weapon, every memorable shooter game needs an equally-memorable gun, I suppose. After the Gravity Gun and the Portal Gun, enter… the Matrix Gun! It can absorb kinetic energy of 3 different types, corresponding to the 3 kinds of transformation (translation, rotation and scale). It can then “shoot” this energy at objects (for solving puzzles) or at enemies (to throw them against walls, spin them silly, or shrink them so you can squash them). As a puzzle-solving example, suppose you’re stuck in a basement with a broken escalator. You see a ventilator whirring above you in the ceiling, you absorb its “rotational energy” and shoot it into the escalator to make it work again.
If you were looking for some whacky ideas, I guess you’re sorted 
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Anybody else who thinks a tech-demo would be a good idea? Or is it just too much?