Second Reality (originally titled Unreal ] - The 2nd Reality) is an demo created by the Finnish demogroup Future Crew">IBM PC compatible">- The 2nd Reality) is an IBM PC compatible demo created by the Finnish demogroup Assembly 1993 demoparty">Demo (computer programming)">demo created by the Finnish demogroup Future Crew. It debuted at the 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 rendering (computer graphics)">computer graphics rendering. 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 voted it one of the "Top 10 Hacks of All Time". Its

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

was released in a

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

repository as public domain software using the Unlicense 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 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.

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 accompl ...

analysis of SR with the now-available

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

teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work toge ...

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 ...

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

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal running on the operating systems CP/M, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. ...

) and development tools. The analysis of the source code also disproved the long-standing and popular speculation that SR uses its own memory manager that accesses the MMU directly; 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 introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...

PC with a Gravis Ultrasound or a Sound Blaster Pro (or register-compatible clone). In the original version which was released, the demo had a bug which caused a slow down. A patch was later released to rectify this problem. While the demo code remains freely available on numerous

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, 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 ...

sites and is now hosted 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 the br ...

hardware directly (using its own built-in

device driver In the context of an operating system, 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, enabli ...

s) which is incompatible with modern

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

, and many of the timings in the demo do not scale up to modern CPU speeds. Therefore, the only way to run the demo on a modern PC with few glitches is by running it under an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

such as

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

. DOSBox is capable of emulating the exotic video modes and the Gravis Ultrasound card 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), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

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 frontman Alexi Laiho, drummer Jaska Raatikainen, bassist Henkka Seppälä, ...

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 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

platform. * Final Reality
pouët.net
by Remedy Entertainment – Although this is a commercial

benchmarking Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are Project management triangle, quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is ...

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 Music performed a cappella ( , , ; ), less commonly spelled acapella in English, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Rena ...

. * 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 (mean ...

programming language. * SHizZLE
Team Pokeme
– A demo on the Pokémon Mini, which contains some parts of Second Reality. * Second Reality 2013
pouët.net
by Checkpoint – remix for

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

* 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. * Rocky Reality
pouët.net
by Bedrock Bros. - a port done for the Pebble Smartwatch. 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 - remake with characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and original music. *First Reality
pouët.net
by Holo Sapiens - 3d argumented reality. *Second Reality X16
pouët.net
by Team FX - an adaptation of the original demo for the Commander X16 platform.

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 an
Internet Archive

In-browser MSDOS emulation
by the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

* ( tp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/hellfire/future_crew-second_reality-1993.mp4 HQ video{cbignore, bot=medic fro
Pouet
1993 software Assembly language software Demos Formerly proprietary software Public-domain software with source code Software using the Unlicense Software developed in Finland