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Second Reality Augmented

Experiment

Future Crew's 1993 demo, rebuilt for the browser effect by effect, each in its classic form and remastered.

The remastered crystal ball effect: a bald demon's face with glowing orange eyes, seen through a glass sphere, with small metal balls at the sides

About the experiment

Second Reality is the demo Future Crew released in 1993, which won the demo competition at Assembly that year. Its effects, voxel landscapes, plasma, polygon flyovers and glass-like "glenz" vectors, were written in hand-tuned assembly for 486 PCs and timed to Skaven and Purple Motion's tracker music.

I was a young teenager when it came out, and it's the demo that made me want to understand graphics programming. Life went another way, and graphics stayed on the list of things I'd love to do one day. This year, working with AI agents, I finally did: every line of code here was written by an agent, with me directing what to build and how it fits together.

Second Reality Augmented rebuilds all 25 parts of the demo in the browser, with WebGL2 shaders and the original soundtrack played through Web Audio. Each effect comes in two versions. The classic one reproduces the original algorithm at its own 320 by 256. The remastered one, for 22 of them, redraws it on the GPU with modern lighting, glass, reflections and glow. Press X while it plays to switch between the two.

Every effect was taken apart from the original assembly and written up in a design document before it was built. Fifteen of them have a learning guide too, chapter by chapter, for anyone who wants to know how these effects work. Alongside the player there's a timeline editor for scrubbing through the demo and comparing the two versions.

It plays in the browser, with no install: press space to start.

Credits

The original Second Reality is by Future Crew (1993): Psi, Trug, Wildfire, Gore, Marvel and Skaven, with music by Purple Motion and Skaven. The recreation leaned on covalichou's JavaScript port and Fabien Sanglard's review of the original code. It's a non-commercial fan recreation for learning and preservation; the original demo and its assets belong to Future Crew.

Screenshots

  • The classic crystal ball effect at 320 by 256: the demon's face with yellow eyes, a blue lens bulging over its left side, metal balls in the corners
    The crystal ball, classic: the original's 320 by 256, lens and all.
  • The remastered crystal ball effect: the demon's face with glowing orange eyes, seen through a glass sphere that refracts and catches the light, with small metal balls in the corners
    The crystal ball, remastered: real refraction through the glass, and glowing eyes.
  • The classic ships flyover: blue and red polygon spaceships over a rocky landscape under a starry sky
    The ships flyover, classic: polygon ships, as the original drew them.
  • The remastered ships flyover: shaded spaceships over a moonlit rocky landscape under a starry sky
    The same flyover, remastered on the GPU, with a glow on the horizon.
  • The classic glenz effect: a translucent blue and grey polyhedron above a checkerboard floor
    Glenz vectors, classic: a see-through polyhedron bouncing on a checkerboard.
  • The remastered glenz effect: a green glass polyhedron with soft reflections over a pink checkerboard floor
    Glenz, remastered: the polyhedron as glass, with real transparency and reflections.
  • The classic dot tunnel: rings of white dots curving away into the dark
    The dot tunnel, classic.
  • The remastered dot tunnel: thousands of glowing blue and pink dots forming a curving tunnel
    The dot tunnel, remastered: each dot a soft glow, coloured by depth.
  • The classic vector balls: small cyan dots in looping trails above a grey floor, with their shadows
    The vector balls, classic.
  • The remastered vector balls: shiny purple spheres in looping trails, reflected in a dark floor
    The vector balls, remastered: shaded spheres with reflections in the floor.
  • The classic mirror ball scroller: blue chrome spheres over rippled water, with a fiery sword cutting across
    The mirror balls, classic.
  • The remastered mirror ball scroller: raymarched chrome spheres reflecting a fiery sword
    The mirror balls, remastered: chrome spheres with real-time reflections.
  • The timeline editor: the vector balls effect in its classic and remastered forms side by side, above a colour-coded timeline of the demo's parts and panels of effect settings
    The editor: classic and remastered side by side, the whole demo on a timeline, and each effect's settings.