Second Reality

Second Reality (originally Unreal ][ - The 2nd Reality) is a demo for DOS made by the Finnish group Future Crew. It was shown on July 30, 1993 at the Assembly 1993 demoparty, where it won first place in the PC demo competition. It was released in October 1993.

It is said to be one of the best demos from the early 1990s for PCs. Slashdot named it one of the "Top 10 Hacks of All Time" in 1999. Its source code was shared to GitHub and made public domain using the Unlicense license for its 20th anniversary in August 2013.

 Description 
There are many popular demo effects of the time, including real-time 3D graphics, image scaling and warping, and moiré patterns. It is known for being synced to the background music, which was rare at the time.

Entering 2, 3, 4 or 5 into the command line starts the demo at different parts. "u" shows an effect where stars move towards the screen.

 Technology 
Second Reality was said to use the MMU directly. However, the source code shows it to go through DOS first.

Second Reality was made for PCs with a 486 (but also works on 386) CPU and Gravis Ultrasound or Sound Blaster Pro (or register-compatible clone). The first version had a problem that made it slower. A patch was later released to fix this.2ndpatch.zip on scene.org

 Remakes 
 Second Reality C64 (pouët.net) by Smash Designs – Runs on the Commodore 64.
 Flash Reality (pouët.net) by The Scampers – Runs in Flash. Many scenes were recreated using ActionScript.
 Second Reality 2013 (pouët.net) by Checkpoint – Runs on the Atari ST.
 8K Reality (pouët.net) by Fulcrum – Runs in 8 kilobytes on Windows. It was made for the Revision 2015 demoparty, where it won second place. The two-dimensional drawings were made using metaballs.
 Rocky Reality (pouët.net) by Bedrock Bros. - Runs on Pebble, a smartwatch. It was released at the Evoke 2016 demoparty, where it won second place in the alternative platforms category.
 Holo Reality (pouët.net) by Bedrock Bros. - Runs on the Looking Glass holographic display. It was released at the Demosplash 2018 demoparty, where it won first place in the modern category.
 First Reality (pouët.net) by Holo Sapiens - Runs in 3D using augmented reality.
 Second Reality X16 (pouët.net) by Team FX - Runs on the Commander X16.

 References 

 Other websites 

 Second Reality download on scene.org
 Second Reality soundtrack in ScreamTracker 3 format
 Second Reality source code on GitHub
 Video footage taken during the making of Second Reality
 In-browser MSDOS emulation on the Internet Archive


Category:Software