The Daily Demoscene
Since I didn't post any demos on Saturday, everyone gets to see two of them today. This time, we take a look at what is arguably one of the most famous demos of all time, Future Crew's Second Reality released in 1993 (the year I graduated high school and first discovered Unix and the Internet :)
Bear in mind that when this demo was written, typical PCs were either fast 386s or slow 486s with four to eight Megs of RAM. Graphics cards typically contained almost no processing power of their own and just 256-512k of RAM on board. It was a rather primitive era, looking back, which makes everything the Future Crew managed to pull off here all the more spectacular. Second Reality also showcases most of the routines which continue to be staples of the demoscene. Elaborately rendered still images displayed while the CPU cranks the math for the next scene, bouncing fountains and 3-D geometrical solids, spinning cubes showing animations on every face, and 3-D solids revolving within other solids all have shown up as thematic elements, even at Block Party in recent years.
Bear in mind that when this demo was written, typical PCs were either fast 386s or slow 486s with four to eight Megs of RAM. Graphics cards typically contained almost no processing power of their own and just 256-512k of RAM on board. It was a rather primitive era, looking back, which makes everything the Future Crew managed to pull off here all the more spectacular. Second Reality also showcases most of the routines which continue to be staples of the demoscene. Elaborately rendered still images displayed while the CPU cranks the math for the next scene, bouncing fountains and 3-D geometrical solids, spinning cubes showing animations on every face, and 3-D solids revolving within other solids all have shown up as thematic elements, even at Block Party in recent years.
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