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Second Reality (originally titled Unreal ] - The 2nd Reality) is an IBM PC compatible Demo (computer programming)">demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film * Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhe ...

created by Future Crew. It debuted at the Assembly (demo party), Assembly 1993 demoparty on July 30, 1993, where it was entered into the PC Demoscene compo, demo competition, and finished in first place with its demonstration of 2D and 3D

computer graphics rendering Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

. The demo was released to the public in October 1993. It is considered to be one of the best demos created during the early 1990s on the PC; in 1999

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evalu ...

voted it one of the "Top 10 Hacks of All Time". Its

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

was released in a

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

repository as

public domain software Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...

using the

Unlicense The Unlicense is a public domain equivalent license for software which provides a public domain waiver with a fall-back public-domain-like license, similar to the CC Zero for cultural works. It includes language used in earlier software projects ...

on the 20th anniversary of the release on 1 August 2013.

Demo description

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

Techno music Techno is a Music genre, genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally music production, produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central Drum beat, rhythm is typ ...

composed by Skaven and

Purple Motion Jonne Valtonen is a Finnish composer, arranger and orchestrator. He is renowned for his contributions in the field of demoscene and tracker music, under the name Purple Motion, and with Future Crew. Life and early career Jonne Valtonen was b ...

using ScreamTracker 3. The degree of synchronization of the visuals with the music was highly impressive for its time.

Hidden part

The demo can be started with a single character command line argument "2" through "5" to start from any of the later four parts. For another part that its introductory text calls "just an experiment" start the demo with a command line argument of "u". The screen will start filling with ever more stars warping towards the screen.

Technical characteristic

In 2013 a

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

analysis of SR with the now available

revealed a design which is built around two characteristical demoscene paradigms:

Teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individu ...

and

Obfuscation Obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The obfuscation might be either unintentional or intentional (although intent u ...

. Internally the demo consists of 23 separated parts which allowed independent, parallel development and free selection of programming language (

assembly Assembly may refer to: Organisations and meetings * Deliberative assembly, a gathering of members who use parliamentary procedure for making decisions * General assembly, an official meeting of the members of an organization or of their representa ...

, C and

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS. It was originally developed by Anders Hejlsberg at ...

) and development tools. The analysis of the source code also revealed that the long-standing and popular speculation that SR uses its own memory manager which accesses the MMU directly is not true; in fact SR uses standard DOS memory management functions.

Running the demo

The demo runs best on an

Intel 80486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following t ...

PC with a Gravis Ultrasound or a

Sound Blaster Pro Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system p ...

(or register-compatible clone). As the demo had in the original released version a slow down bug, a

patch Patch or Patches may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Patch Johnson, a fictional character from ''Days of Our Lives'' * Patch (''My Little Pony''), a toy * "Patches" (Dickey Lee song), 1962 * "Patches" (Chairmen of the Board song ...

was released later. While the demo code remains freely available on numerous

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

sites and is now hosted with source code on

, it is difficult or impossible to run Second Reality directly on a modern PC. The demo accesses

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

and

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...

hardware directly (using its own built-in

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...

s) which is incompatible with current OSs, and many of the timings in the demo do not scale up to modern

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

speeds. To run this demo (with minor glitches) on a modern machine running a modern OS like

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

, one can use

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...

. DOSBox is capable of emulating the exotic video modes and the Gravis Ultrasound preferred by Second Reality, and can be configured to the 33

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one h ...

recommended on the demo's configuration screen for optimal viewing.

Legacy

Later uses of soundtrack

Children of Bodom Children of Bodom was a Finnish melodic death metal band from Espoo. Formed in 1993 as Inearthed, the final line-up of the group upon their split in 2019 consisted of Alexi Laiho (lead guitar, lead vocals), Jaska Raatikainen (drums), Henkka S ...

used the introduction music for the first track of ''Ubiquitous Absence Of Remission'' when they were known as Inearthed. * The introduction music was used in the ''Tripomatic Remix By Sels "Franky Jones" F.'', of ''Are You Ready?'' by ''Overdog'', released on Bonzai Records in 1996. * The soundtrack of the demo was licensed fo
SHMUP
an iOS game. * This song is featured in the albu
"Metropolis"
(2011) in the tracks 2, 3 and 4. * The soundtrack of this demo is used in the song "Persian Synthesizer" by Space (2018).

Remixes

* Second Reality C64
pouët.net
by Smash Designs – Probably the most well-known and most impressive remix, being a faithful adaptation 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. - A remix, which shows all parts of the demo being played in real life. * Zecond Re@lity
pouët.net
by Zon@ Neutr@ - Also a "real life" remix, however, this one also features the original soundtrack being performed a cappella. * Flash Reality
pouët.net
by The Scampers – A Macromedia Flash remix, with many scenes recreated using the

Actionscript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meani ...

programming language. * SHizZLE
Team Pokeme
– A demo on the

Pokémon Mini The (officially stylized as Pokémon mini) is a handheld game console that was designed and manufactured by Nintendo and themed around the ''Pokémon'' media franchise. It is the smallest game system with interchangeable cartridges ever produce ...

, which contains some parts of Second Reality. * Second Reality 2013
pouët.net
by Checkpoint – remix for Atari ST * 8K Reality
pouët.net
by Fulcrum – a remix done in 8 kilobytes of executable PC code. Released at Revision 2015 demoparty where it was ranked second. The two-dimension drawings were modelled using

metaballs In computer graphics, metaballs are organic-looking ''n''-dimensional isosurfaces, characterised by their ability to meld together when in close proximity to create single, contiguous objects. In solid modelling, polygon meshes are commonly ...

. * Rocky Reality
pouët.net
by Bedrock Bros. - a port done for the

Pebble Smartwatch A pebble is a clast of rock with a particle size of based on the Udden-Wentworth scale of sedimentology. Pebbles are generally considered larger than granules ( in diameter) and smaller than cobbles ( in diameter). A rock made predominan ...

. Released at Evoke 2016 demoparty where it was ranked second in the alternative platform category. * Holo Reality
pouët.net
by Bedrock Bros. - a demake for th
Looking Glass
holographic display. Released at Demosplash 2018 demoparty where it was ranked first in the category "modern." *Second Realipony
pouët.net
by Equestrian Alicoders - funny ponyful remake with original music. *First Reality
pouët.net
by Holo Sapiens - 3d argumented reality.

References

External links

Second Reality demo download
on scene.org
Second Reality soundtrack
in ScreamTracker 3 format (693 K)
Second Reality source code
on

Video footage taken during the making of Second Reality
, available on

youtube.com YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, Ca ...

an
Internet Archive

In-browser MSDOS emulation
by the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

* {{YouTube, KTjnt_WSJu8, Video capture of ''Second Reality'' ( tp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/hellfire/future_crew-second_reality-1993.mp4 HQ videofro
Pouet
1993 software Assembly language software Demos Formerly proprietary software Public-domain software with source code Software using the Unlicense license