Is the demoscene a source of advancements in computer graphics?
The demo scene has been doing Ray marching for a long time, but only recently have main stream AAA games started using it.  The main use I've seen it for is for screenspace reflections, raymarching against the zbuffer (killzone, call of duty).  Also, shadertoy was made by inigo quillez, who is from the demo scene.  People are now using shadertoy to prototype and share graphics technique research.  So I'd say the answer is yes, but I'd like to hear more examples if other people have any (: