Second reality

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Unreal] [- The 2nd Reality

logo
Basic data

developer Future crew
Publishing year October 1993
Current  version v1.0 (+ Fix)
(February 20, 1994)
operating system DOS
programming language 50% assembler , C and Turbo Pascal
category demo
License Public domain
German speaking No
https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality

Unreal] [- The 2nd Reality (later mainly as a Second Reality known) is a PC - Demo the Future Crew . It was released at Assembly '93 and won first place in the IBM PC compatible category . It is regarded as one of the best PC demos of the early 1990s, for example the online magazine Slashdot voted Second Reality retrospectively in 1999 as one of the "Top 10 Hacks of All Time". On August 1, 2013, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the demo's publication, the source code was published on GitHub as a public domain under an “unlicense” software license .

meaning

The importance of this demo lies in the graphic and acoustic effects generated in real time . The demo, which is only 2  MB in size, does not contain sound and images like in a video , but generates both live through calculations with the CPU . In addition, there was an impressively stable synchronicity between picture and sound despite the dynamically calculated real-time effects, even on different PC hardware. Complex real-time generated multimedia content was only platforms with specialized graphics and audio chips as the earlier Amiga - AGA chip , known. The complex media content consists of up to 32 digital audio streams mixed in software (the S3M-based soundtrack) and the software rendering of u. a. multiple illuminated , rotating and deformed 3D polyhedra . In 1993 this showed the potential of the general-purpose PC platform not only as an "electronic typewriter" on low-performance 386 hardware . With Second Reality as a figurehead, the demo scene became one of the pioneers of the multimedia PC platform in the early 1990s .

Description of the structure

Many techniques that were known from other demos, including older work by the Future Crew, have been reused and improved in this demo.

The demo is built up internally from 23 separate parts that merge seamlessly into one another. This enabled parallel development by the FC members as well as a free choice of programming languages; Assembler, C and Pascal can be found in the source code of the demo.

The soundtrack of the demo consists of electro / ambient music created by Peter “Skaven” Hajba and Jonne “Purple Motion” Valtonen using the ScreamTracker 3 , a tracker music sequencer .

Some effects and especially parts of the soundtrack were inspired by the demo "Desert Dreams" by the group "Kefrens", released on the Amiga a few months earlier, which won first prize at "The Gathering" in April 1993. The effects shown in the demo are as follows:

Intro with spaceships

The intro shows text rendering against a background. Spaceships fly away from the camera demonstrating 3D rendering. The spaceships explode some distance away, creating a shock wave. The "Ten seconds to transmission" sound effect is sampled from the movie Batman .

Hopping and deforming polyhedron

The introductory part of the music is over and the first melody starts. A polyhedron appears and bounces with perfect timing to the music on a chess board. Here, 3D rendering is shown together with real-time network transformation. After a while, another polyhedron appears, and the smaller one hops around in the larger, semi-transparent one .

Tunnel flight

This scene shows a twisting tunnel made up of individual points moving towards the camera. This creates the feeling for the viewer that he is flying through the tunnel.

Oscillating circles

A cross-fade to oscillating circles is shown, which quickly create space for the next scene.

Moiré pattern

The moiré effect was very popular in demos at the time and was not left out here either.

creature

The graph of ogerähnlichen fantasy creature (some say a Ulik from Marvel - comic universe ) scrolls from right in the visible area of the screen and is hidden . A text scroller follows with the text "Another way to scroll".

Rotating zoom on a human head

After the text fades out, the scene changes to a devil-looking human face with a pentagram tattooed on its forehead . A transparent ball moves across the face and acts like a magnifying glass. The camera starts rotating and zooming. In this scene Vice- Admiral William HP Blandy is quoted with his comment on the nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll : I am not an atomic playboy .

Plasma effects

The plasma effect is a continuation of the work from the previous demo Unreal , which took first place among the PC demos at Assembly '92.

Rotating, dynamically textured cube

A rotating three-dimensional cube with animated plasma textures is shown.

Vector balls

Many small balls fall into the picture, bounce off the floor and form a system of particles . This also forms different spiral Lissajous figures .

Ray tracing

The ray tracing scene shows balls on which text and a sword are reflected several times.

Animated water

A water-like surface is calculated with the help of a voxel engine.

Hopping picture

An image falling into the scene from above, being compressed and stretched in the process, shows a rider on a fantasy creature (possibly a wenidigo from the Marvel Comics).

Flight scene through a 3D polygon city

The penultimate scene is a flight through a large three-dimensional city. Here are flat shading and Gouraud shading used.

Future Crew logo

The final scene is displayed. It shows two nuts on which the word Future Crew is applied.

  • Intro with spaceships

  • Hopping and deforming polyhedron

  • Tunnel flight

  • Oscillating circles

  • Moiré pattern

  • "Another way to scroll" scrolling effect

  • Plasma effects

  • Rotating, dynamically textured cube

  • Vector balls

  • Animated water

  • Flight scene through a 3D polygon city

  • Future Crew logo on nuts

  • Outro

Technical characteristics

A DOS system with an Intel 80486 CPU and a Gravis Ultrasound is mentioned as the optimal PC system for playing the demo , Sound Blaster compatible sound cards and 386 CPUs can also be sufficient.

On modern PC hardware, however, it is difficult or even impossible to get Second Reality to play. This is due to the direct use of the graphics and audio hardware via its own drivers and ultimately many internal timings, which do not scale up to today's CPU speeds.

However, this demo is on the DOSBox - emulator with modern operating systems and are brought faster hardware up and running, as DOSBox also emulates the exotic has become by now preferred by Second Reality video modes and the Gravis Ultrasound.

When executing Second Reality from a deep directory subpath (such as C:\demos\futurcrw\2ndreal\2ndreal.exe) a bug in path processing causes the program to crash in the vector ball section.

An analysis by reverse engineering specialist Fabian Sanglard of the now available source code reveals the elegant structure, which combines two aspects of the demo scene: teamwork and obfuscation . The long-standing and popular assumption that the Future Crew had written its own memory manager that accesses the MMU directly was refuted by Sanglard when the source code became available; SR uses standard DOS memory management functions.

reception

  • Children of Bodom used the intromusic for the first track of Ubiquito's Absence Of Remission when they were still known as Inearthed .
  • The demo appears casually in 2009 in an official Nokia promotional video for the Maemo .
  • The demo soundtrack was licensed in 2010 and used in the Apple iOS - Game SHMUP.
  • The demo exists with additional comments from the Future Crew on the MindCandy DVD. The Dolby Surround information at the beginning had to be removed for licensing reasons.

Remakes

The demo, considered to be groundbreaking, encouraged many to creatively emulate it. Probably the most important remake appeared in 1997: the complete demo was implemented on the technically much less powerful Commodore 64 by the demo group Smash Designs . Both the graphic effects and the music, peppered with voice digitization, were implemented in appealing quality, although a C64 does not have powerful graphics and audio chips, a CPU clocked at just 0.98 MHz and only 64 KB RAM memory. That this impressive synchronicity between picture and sound, designed for PC hardware, was possible on a C64 despite the dynamically calculated real-time effects, is all the more impressive. Within the C64 demo scene, however, this implementation is viewed with mixed feelings, because many of the effects were already created in other C64 demos in a similar form and would be possible in an even higher quality.

Another noteworthy remake was created under the name Real Reality . Real Reality is an imitation of the demo without a computer. All effects are reproduced in a video film using self-made objects or people. The group Never won first place in 1999 in the Wild Compo (open system competition) of the Mekka & Symposium .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fabian Sanglard: Second Reality Code Review: Part 1 (Introduction) ( English ) fabiensanglard.net. August 16, 2013. Retrieved on August 23, 2013: “ The code is something like I had never seen before that perfectly represents two essential aspects of demomaking: Team work. Obfuscation. "
  2. ↑ Assembly 93 results . pouet.net. May 3, 2020. Accessed May 3, 2020.
  3. ↑ Slashdot's "Top 10 Hacks of All Time" ( English ) slashdot.org . December 13, 1999. Retrieved December 25, 2010: “ Second Reality by Future Crew - Awesome, Mindblowing, Unbelievable, Impossible. Some of the words used to describe what this piece of code from demoscene gods Future Crew did on 1993-era PC hardware. Even by today's standards, what this program can do without relying on any kind of 3D graphics acceleration is impressive. As if the graphics weren't impressive enough, it can even playback in Dolby Surround Sound. "
  4. ↑ github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality/blob/master/UNLICENSE
  5. ↑ a b Ryan Smith: Happy 20th Birthday Second Reality ( en ) Anandtech.com . August 1, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
  6. ↑ Abbyss announcement on Twitter (English)
  7. ^ Fabian Sanglard: Second Reality Code Review: Part 5 (Parts) ( English ) August 16, 2013. Accessed on August 31, 2013: “ Each Second Reality visual effects is a full DOS executable. They are called PART and there are 23 of them in total. This design decision allowed fast prototyping, simultaneous development (since FC probably did not have source control tools) and free language choice (ASM, C and even Pascal can be found in the source). "
  8. ↑ Kefrens: Desert Dreams (Amiga). April 10, 1993. Retrieved November 26, 2014 .
  9. ↑ a b tre_qu: DosBox, Compatibility: Second Reality - Future Crew (1993) . dosbox.com. March 28, 2007. Retrieved January 2, 2011: “ Runs perfectly, on my setup. Demo crashing halfway (during the "particle spring" part) is a bug in the demo, which relates to the path being to long (also happens to real DOS machines). Run it from C: or a 1 level deep subdirectory to fix. "
  10. ↑ Fabian Sanglard: Second Reality Code Review: Part 2 (Engine) ( English ) August 16, 2013. Retrieved on August 31, 2013: “ There were many legends about Second Reality using an elaborated memory manager via the MMU but there is no trace this in the engine. Memory management is actually delegated to DOS: The engine starts by deallocating all the RAM and then distribute it on demand. The only fancy trick is the ability to allocated RAM from the end of the heap: This is done using the return value of DOS malloc when too much RAM is requested. "
  11. ↑ Maemo5 (video) In: Dashboard, 0:19, Second Reality top left . Nokia. 2009. Archived from the original on July 12, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 13, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / maemo.nokia.com
  12. ↑ Fabien Sanglard: SHMUP ( English ) December 19, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2011: " It [the Music] comes from one of the greatest hack of all time:" Second Reality "by Future Crew. Yes a deal was signed so I could use the music. "
  13. ↑ Real Reality by Never. Pouet.net, accessed March 14, 2010 .

Web links