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Second Reality

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Second Reality is an assembler demonstration created by Future Crew for the demo contest Assembly '93. In the contest, Second Reality placed first with its demonstration of 2D rendering, 3D rendering and realtime ray tracing. It is believed by many to be the best demo created in the early 1990s.

Demo description

The effects produced by the demo exceeded what were widely believed to be the limits of PC hardware in 1993. Many techniques used by other demos, including Future Crew's own earlier work, were refined and reused in Second Reality. The demo had a soundtrack of Detroit techno composed by Skaven and Purple Motion using ScreamTracker 3. The degree of synchronization of the visuals with the music was highly impressive for its time.

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Introduction

First the introduction plays, demonstrating text rendering on a background. After that is done several ships appear and fly away from the camera, demonstrating 3D rendering. After some distance the ships explode and the screen fades to display an anthromorphic creature which then fades away as well.

File:2ndrealityintro.png
introduction
File:2ndrealityspacecrafts.png
spacecrafts
File:2ndrealityexplosion.png
explosion


Bouncing sphere

Next a sphere bouncing on a surface appears, demonstrating 3D rendering and realtime mesh deformation. After a while another larger sphere appears and the smaller sphere begins bouncing inside the larger.

File:2ndrealitysphere.png
sphere bouncing on surface
File:2ndrealitysphereinsphere.png
sphere bouncing in sphere


Tunnel

The next scene is hard to describe, but it's sort of a tunnel built up by discrete points that move towards the camera.

File:2ndrealitytunnel.png
tunnel


Oscillating circles

The tunnel fades out and for a while some oscillating circles are displayed.

File:2ndrealitycircles.png
oscilating circles


Interference patterns

A scene that could be described as a light show.

File:2ndrealitynoidea1.png
interference patterns
File:2ndrealitynoidea2.png
interference patters


Creature

Next an image of a creature rolls in from the right, and fades away. Some leaves and water is displayed, along with text characters floating downstream.

File:2ndrealityanthropod1.png
Creature
File:2ndrealityfloatingtext.png
Floating text


Magnifying and rotating head

After the text has floated by, again the scene changes to display something that resembles a human head, and a sphere comes down from the top left corner simulating the below surface being reflected through a sphere. The sphere vanishes down in the lower right corner and the camare begins to spin right, fall down and bounce up on the surface. The camera then falls down and bounces back up again after which the scene again fades out.

File:2ndrealityreflectingsphere.png
Sphere refracting surface


Colored surfaces

When the image fades in the camera is placed close to a surface changing texture everytime.

File:2ndrealitysurface.png
Surface


Colored spinning cube

After a few surfaces has been displayed a cube comes up that has these surfaces attached and spins around while translating towards and from the camera.

File:2ndrealityspinningcube.png
Spinning Cube


Bouncing spheres

After a while this scene fades and several small spheres begin falling down and bouncing on the ground surface in varius fashions making patterns.

File:2ndrealitybouncingspheres.png
Bouncing spheres


Raytracing

Again there is a fadeout and a fade in, this time we are looking at a scene with two spheres, and a sword starts translating towards the camera. The spheres will display a reflection of the sword as well as a reflection of the aforementioned reflection in the other sphere. The scene was rendered using Future Crew's homemade raytracing software.

File:2ndrealityraytracing.png
Raytracing


Water

As the scene changes again, this time image rendered will be of a surface changing shape, simular to that of water.

File:2ndrealitywater.png
Water?


Bouncing bitmap

After this, an image will fall in from above, picturing a rider on what appears to be yet another fantasy creature. The image will hit the ground and bounce up while behaving like yello.

File:2ndrealitybouncingimage.png
Bouncing image


3D spacecraft fly-through

In the next scene, a hovercraft flies around in a city, leaving it and heading up right over the text "Future Crew".

File:2ndrealitytown.png
Spacecraft in a town
File:2ndrealityfuturecrew.png
Future Crew


Future Crew bitmap

The image fades out and the final scene fades in, an image of two nuts with the text "Future Crew" written on them.

File:2ndrealityfuturecrew2.png
Future Crew


Running the demo

While the demo code remains freely available on numerous Internet sites, it is difficult or impossible to run Second Reality directly on a modern PC. The demo used its own memory manager which accessed the MMU directly in a way which is not compatible with modern operating systems, accessed video and sound hardware directly (using its own built-in device drivers), and many of the timings in the demo do not scale up to modern CPU speeds.

While not flawless, both DOSBox and VDMSound can run this demo.

The demo runs best on an Intel 80486 PC with a Gravis Ultrasound or a Sound Blaster Pro (or register-compatible clone).

Remakes

The legendary state of this demo inspired a lot of people to do their own remixes of the show. The most popular ones are the following:

  • Second Reality C64 (pouët.net) by Smash Designs - Probably the most well-known and most impressive remix, being a 1:1 copy of the original demo for the Commodore 64 platform.
  • Final Reality (pouët.net) by Remedy Entertainment - Although this is a commercial benchmarking software, one of the video scenes pays homage to the original demo's "3D spacecraft fly-through" part.
  • Real Reality (pouët.net) by N.E.V.E.R. - An interesting remix, which shows all parts of the demo being played in real life, mostly using household appliances.
  • Zecond Re@lity (pouët.net) by Zon@ Neutr@ - Also a "real life" remix, however, this one also features the original soundtrack being performed a capella.