Future Crew - Second Reality (1993) [60fps]
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as the landmark demo of the demoscene's golden era, and this capture lets people watch it without running it under DOS.
What it is
A 60fps capture of Future Crew's 1993 MS-DOS demo Second Reality, one of the best-known pieces of the demoscene. It runs about 16 minutes of real-time graphics and music effects on PC hardware of the era.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ChrisArchitect · 2023-10 · on “What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form”
Nice little interview that touches on a number of the magical parts of the scene and the many elements and major sites. This guy only started in 1997? All good, but feel like that's just a bit 'after' the golden, significant era. There was definitely a change as PC/windows development happened ...right around then I'd say. But maybe that's just my take on it. Feel like references to some classic demos should be late 80s/early 90s for the sheer impact and that it was a much much more active scene then. Future Crew "Second Reality" forever. ;) [this video]
Recommends herodoturtle · 2021-03 · on “Demoscene the Amiga Years Volume 1”
Loved reading this comment, thanks for sharing. The demo scene is what got me into programming in my youth - in particular Denthor's BBS tuts, and many late night adventures in mode13h. Good times! > That was when Future Crew showed up with 2nd Reality and the double bouncing, transparent balls. I still remember the feeling of amazement and utter loss at seeing that :) Future Crew's 2nd Reality demo, for those that haven't seen it: [this video]
Recommends Flow · 2023-11 · on “Northlight makes Alan Wake 2 shine”
Here's a 60fps video of the same demo. The demo-sceners work really hard to make everything 60fps(1 vbl), so watching it in any other frame-rate feels wrong. [this video]
Cites joking · 2020-01 · on “Demoscene, the secret behind Finnish game industry”
now you can see on youtube instead of having to download an executable and run on msdos ( [this video] ) those old good times when internet access was limited and going to parties where the way to play online / share / meet.
Cites ChrisArchitect · 2020-04 · on “Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage”
this recognition gives me lots of warm feels. The number of aspects that the demoscene brought together: programming, art, music, an online world of connection, and community - was incredible and had a huge impact on me when I discovered and learned more about it as a young kid in the early 90s. All I can think of to commend this occasion is Future Crew 'Second Reality' :) [this video]
Cites elvis70 · 2020-11 · on “Demo or Die (1995)”
The source code (+data) of Second Reality by Future Crew from 1993 is available under an open source license: [LINK] It consists of 32K lines of assembler, 24K lines of C and 2K lines of Pascal. Here is a video of the demo: [this video]
Cites stevefan1999 · 2023-10 · on “What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form”
The gaming industry should always look on the demoscene. One of the most influential demo, Second Reality [1] (I think it is internally called Unreal 2), eventually impressed Tim Sweeney (yes, that Tim Sweeney from Epic Games today) and wanted to hire Future Crew to make Epic Pinball but was unsuccessful. Coincidentally, the first FC Assembly demo is called Unreal, and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with Unreal the game, and the etymology of Unreal Engine itself. I always liked demoscene because they push the tech to its limit, for example kkrieger which is a DirectX game in 96K [3], which is rare to this day due to Wirth's law [2], considering most of the games today are bloated as