Second Reality Demo for Commander X16

[@danwellington3571]

Unrelated but lol at 1.44M subscribers

[@openevents]

Yeah, the Original PC version was 1.44M ... nice 😃

[@kaasman78]

Stupid of me to think I was the only one seeing this 😂.

[@danwellington3571]

@@xWaLeEdOoOx Unrelated to the video under which I am commenting

[@jrherita]

1.68M and he'll have an Amiga worth of subs

[@ronm6585]

Yes, High Density subscriber count. 😊

[@aaronperl]

I can't begin to describe how much I love this. So many CPU cycles on my 486 were dedicated to playing this demo over and over. I still listen to the soundtrack sometimes. Thank you so much for sharing.

[@Brew78]

Came here to say something very similar. It was the first program to truly blow my mind as to what was possible on a PC. I tinkered a bit with ScreamTracker3 back in the day too (and eventually Impulse Tracker), and having access to the S3Ms and all the samples that were in the demo was an unbelievable thing.

[@surject]

@@Brew78 Jurassic Park in June, 2nd Reality in October, Doom in December ...that stuff was hardcoded into my 14y mind that year - so yeah, still watching the movie and the demo, listening to the music and its remixes and playing the game in its modded variants...

[@Jdvc-yd5tx]

The YM2610 is fantastic. Released around 1990 so slightly newer than the 2151. Furnace works on my SoundblasterX! Great work tildearrow! 🥂 ❤

[@Jdvc-yd5tx]

Taito Arcade. 👍

[@QixIceni]

Very impressive. I hope more programmers go back to the demo scene. One of the main points of a demo is to push a computer beyond what it was designed to do. If people keep doing that with the X16, imagine what we'll see.

[@izzimouse]

Future Crew's Second Reality is my Roman Empire. I love seeing DOOM ported everywhere, but I'd love to see this ported more places. This is amazing. Thank you so much for this!

[@landmphone7046]

So the X16 can... DOOM!

[@jess648]

⁠@@landmphone7046 not likely, DOOM was originally designed for 32 bit CPUs like the Intel i486. unless there’s a miraculous port of DOOM somewhere that runs on the 6502 I don’t know how practical something like this would be.

[@AckzaTV]

It's your roman empire? That's very romantic

[@DxDeksor]

@@jess648 there's currently a 16-bit dos port of doom ongoing, which works even on 8088 pcs ! It's not 6502 doom, but it might remove some limits that prevented original doom from being ported to 6502. Otherwise maybe the SNES doom's code could be ported ? Though it's probably mostly running on the super FX 2 :/

[@bradroberts4202]

This demo needs to be included with all commander x16's 😎✅

[@DarkMatterBurrito]

I am so glad that I was around when Future Crew was active in the early 90s.

[@Mtaalas]

Future Crew is still active though... not like they used to, i mean they've got families, jobs etc. but they're are still doing demos :)

[@darkhelmet169]

@@Mtaalas Some of them started FutureMark, some of them joined Remedy, and Skaven did the soundtrack to Bejeweled 3. So they really never stopped

[@NaoPb]

​@@darkhelmet169so that's why the Bejeweled 3 soundtrack is so unusually good.

[@jovetj]

Purple Motion is the same age as me, born just a few days after me, in fact. I check in on his goings-on once in a while. 🫡 Mr. Valtonen!

[@chrisbrooks6697]

The benchmark by which I used to judge every PC in the early 90's. when I was about 16 years old. This brings back memories!

[@CorrosionX4]

Same

[@Prizm44]

Wow, Second Reality in realtime on a 6502 CPU... damn! I played this demo countless times on my 386 16MHz as a young teen. It ran surprisingly well, a credit to the amazing programmers in the demoscene.

[@douggale5962]

The store buffer in your video card gets a chunk of the credit too. That tiny bit of pipelining is what makes it feasible.

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

Some of the scenes ran pretty fast on a 386 but some definitely struggled more than on this, especially the 3D flying scenes if I recall (and it has only been 30 years..) :D

[@NeverMind-pk4wz]

Checkout Second Reality by Smash Designs on the C64, dates back to 1997.

[@neqkk]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y5jFn5-epJyqabc

[@omsi-fanmark]

In contrast to the PC version that did everything using CPU-based rendering, the Commander X16 is more like an Amiga: It spreads each task to the chip best suited for the desired kind of work. So it's using some kind of hardware acceleration. Don't try this with the 6502 CPU alone.

[@aaronc5918]

Looks like a great port. I remember originally watching this (and FC's Unreal demo) with my adolescent face pressed up against a 15" CRT for the 'immersive' experience.

[@KosmosAc]

Certainly my memory tricks me, but I want to believe that this doesn't look any worse than the original. Knowing the technical limitiations of the X16: this is an absolute masterpiece!

[@Jammet]

Yeah it's an astonishing and brilliant show, and if you didn't know, in many parts you wouldn't be able to tell which version you are watching. :3

[@michaelblair5566]

Shows you want a 6502 can really do at 8MHz doesn't it?

@@michaelblair5566 with Vera FX accelerator, yes.

[@ZincSpray]

@@michaelblair5566 More like it shows how much difference a (primitive) gpu and math co-processor makes for good old 6502.

[@litjellyfish]

@@ZincSprayexactly. It’s a rigged game 😅

[@albertsandberg]

I was at the demoparty in denmark when they were releasing the c64 one. Jaws to the floor for sure. And it was the original PC one that sparked my interest in the demoscene.

[@joonglegamer9898]

Feels like how the Commodore 64 would have evolved if it was an Amiga, but still an Commodore 64.

[@The8BitGuy]

And that's exactly what we were going for.

[@Okurka.]

You mean like the Commodore 65?

[@pasromano75]

Yes .... But on certain verses, it seems even Better than Amiga !

[@olcsohigany]

@@The8BitGuy And You did it right!

[@thorr2]

My mind is officially blown. This is INCREDIBLE and I don't mean that lightly. Great job!

[@jess648]

that VERA+YM2151 port of Skaven/Purple Motion’s score is incredible

[@jovetj]

Yes, a really good job!

[@jess648]

@@jovetj one of the best i’ve seen in a Second Reality version thus far besides the C64 version which is this is partially based off since both systems use the 6502

[@incogninto1-1]

Happy 1.44M subscribers!

[@gabiballetje]

Damn, that is a very good result for such a machine, wasn't expecting it to do that good on this classic demo. I remember when it came out, my brother had a Soundblaster 16 and a for the time quite big stereo setup, and to this day this is one of the best demos out there.

[@ProIndy8]

The most classic demo ever done. And the music is such a banger. I have it on my everyday playlist on Spotify. :D

[@vicmiller7191]

Great demo and the sound track is top notch in my book. Thanks

[@HattmannenNilsson]

What a nice tribute to the demoscene! And what better way to show some of the capabilities of the new platform. The C64 conversion of the demo is no small feat, and I imagine that this port isn't either, especially as the platform is still new. I hope the X16 will enjoy even a fraction of ingenuity in pushing the platform the C64 did and this certainly looks like a good start. My complements to the musician! The music conversion sounded great! I don't know the limitations of the sound chip, but a lot of the time is sounded spot on and only a bit thin in one or two of places which is far beyond what I expected. The soundtrack is really iconic and is hard to do justice, but you sure succeeded! I'm especially happy the voice samples could be kept in as those can be both memory and CPU-time expensive on a more limited platform. Well done to everyone involved!

[@CobyTheLuckyFox]

Awesome to see the insane amount of hard work by a friend paying off :) this is truly amazing.

[@JustAMindlessDrone]

Use to run this demo on my Dx2-66 Love it. still have the music

[@TanerH]

The demo scene in the late 80s / early 90s is part of some core memories for me

[@Stabby666]

That is an awesome piece of work! I was thinking "the Vera is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here!" during the demo :) It's amazingly close to the original for sure.

[@mojs3243]

Back to the 90s , fantastic. Thanks for reminding me of my younger years

[@marcgirard475]

Love the "new" soundtrack! Perfect blend of the original S3M samples and chip tune! Very nice work guys! (And that's from an old tracker/scener!). 😊

[@AshWeststar]

I did not expect this, amazing effort to recreate Second reality. Fantastic work!

[@fwiffo]

Although this was the most popular and well known, a lot of people in-the-know consider Crystal Dream 2 by Triton as the most impressive PC demo of 1993.

[@allan.n.7227]

@@fwiffo absolute gem as well for sure.. crystal dream loved a good dx machine afair. Especially the chess scene

[@Gossamer2]

I remember seeing these Future Crew demos on my PC. They would blow my mind because they were doing graphics and music never seen before. Those demos were always pushing the limits and would always be waiting to see the next one.

[@kaasman78]

This brings back memories. Very cool! Side note....channel has 1.44 million subs. Somehow that feels appropriate for this channel 😂.

[@ronaldbonte]

The original demo would often hang or crash my (then) 486 SX computer. but I got it running better what I upgraded the CPU. Seeing this demo run on a 6502 straight up blew my mind!!! I loved the original, but this is an awesome recreation! Well done!!!!!!

[@bryanmcgoon1915]

Thank you for posting this, to say I was overjoyed to see this again is a understatement. I remember when this launched it got me into building computers as a kid. I was excited to make changes and see how the PC reacted. I have been building and benchmarking computers ever since. Thank you!

[@mbwroobel]

I still remember waiting for this to hit my local filez BBS just after the assembly get-together that year. I have been a fan of Purple Motion's music for years, and this is among his best!

[@bjorn1761]

I remember the original demo. It came also on the CDRom of the book PC underground which I owned and read, wich they exolained all sorts of techniques, like mode X, 3d calculations using bitshifts, how to blow up a crt monitor etc. Back then people learned programming from books, bizar and fantastic that you have been able to recreate this on a different architecture!

[@bad.sector]

Had the same book, same CD, now have them twice (my earlier and a later version). The book was a good start albeit having mistakes. Made my own MOD player inspired by it (SoundLib 2 for Pascal includes it), my own graphics libraries (Grafx and GX2), and yeah, learned that it had quite some mistakes, but it connected me with the demo scene (was working for c't for some reports about it).

[@SeanBZA]

Downloaded over a 1200 baud line, using a few hours of phone time to get it done. The days when connecting to the Internet was via a gateway on Beltel ( SA version of Prestel) that dropped you to a Unix guest shell on a server, and then you used a text based browser like Lynx to get onto the Internet. On the phone from Friday from 7PM all the way through to Monday morning 6AM, because they offered a cheap call package that meant you only paid a fixed charge for this block, just had to stay on line the entire time. You bet I cleaned every connection all the way to the building patch panel after a week, and logged faults for line noise as well. Lead sheathed cable, and then the line to the exchange was 305m of paper insulated 250 pair copper, predating the later on problem prone 500 pair aluminium wire cable they laid next to it. the bonus of living in a building that had been wired up and completed in early 1939.

[@keupanen]

WT heck, this is awesome! Hits 90's Assembly visitor and Future crew fan hard. In good way :) I was there when they published Second reality. Dammit im old :D

[@DeccaOnline]

You successfully entered the demoscene by storm, welcome. And what a good job you all did, amazing work.

[@sigmonfury02]

This is epic.... Never thought I'd see this running on a 6502

[@directrix1]

This is such a flippin' amazing recreation! I love it!

[@KriscrossnewsDe]

Props to Mooinglemur and Jeffrey H! I watched all 2nd Reality Demos I found, but this one is imho the most accurate version on another system, I 've ever witnessed. Visuals and Sound are awesome, but I've so many questions about the details.

[@paulofalca0]

Amazing hardware! And great demo conversion! One of the best ports if not the best! Well done!

[@iamjustaclone]

wow that was awesome to see and hear, brings back memories, but really nice recreation, esp within the constraints, hats off!

[@nebula0024]

Wow, I remember playing around with the original version of this back in the day! Awesome to see people haven't forgotten about it. 😁

[@Cyberias74]

That's so cool to see this ported. So Epic demo from Epic Finnish crew. You can also find Finnish document of Future Crew / making of-video of original demo from tube

[@SpaRtanl33tz]

Just the video I needed to start my Friday morning with coffee. Thank you sir.

[@Dr.Dawson]

Techmoan must have lent Dave that Atari music visualization box from 1975 hahahaha. Great demo indeed.

[@AiOinc1]

Absolutely beautiful presentation, right down to the DOS in the intro. Wish we had some kind of default MS-DOS style shell that worked on the X16.

[@gfabasic32]

So happy to see your hard work bearing fruit!

[@_SurferGeek_]

Discounting where you primarily found demos, I was always blown away by what could be done with such a small amount of code. They got me to look at my computer as much more than just a game platform and interested in programming.

[@JoePCool14]

Oh hey, it's the thing I saw live at VCF Midwest. It was a great panel, David! Great to meet you again too.

[@HisVirusness]

That was such an awesome weekend.

[@draketungsten74]

I wish I had more time and energy for all that but I did at leat get to see him as I wandered by his booth.

[@janlyakhovsky5033]

Для воспроизводства ваших "тайтлов" мне потребовалось 18 минут. Видимо я родился в другую эпоху, динозавры.

[@JordanSugarman]

Oh man, I remember downloading and running this demo on my 486 in my dorm room at college. I was showing it off to anyone that would watch, and they were all blown away.

[@otter-pro]

Music is incredible, especially on headphones.

[@pixadordelterrat2725]

Second Reality was surely inspired by Desert Dream by Kefrens on the Amiga. Even in this port some parts look and sound pretty similar.

[@rarbiart]

in '93 i felt blown away by this demo. it was nothing like i'd seen on a PC before.

[@Okurka.]

I wasn't impressed, having an Amiga since 1986.

[@peterjansen6818]

What was even more impressive is some of the effects and routines looked like standard demo play, but the way they put the demo together, along with the music, made it quite the experience to watch.

[@PG-gs5vb]

@@Okurka. Amiga would have struggled just playing the 8-channel soundtrack with full panning.

[@8001010]

Smoke is absolute amazing on 15" crt original version, neither 60p capture can render analog effect.

[@jm131719]

WOW indeed! Ranks right up there with some of the best Amiga 500 demos. Can't believe this is an 8 bit computer.

[@TheRestartPoint]

Brilliant graphics and music. Never seen it but some of the music and 3D scenes remind me of the 3D benchmark test that was popular around the time of Voodoo 1 cards and I watched that in awe a million times. I reckon it was heavily inspired by this.

[@jbmcb]

Most of FutureCrew went on to write 3dmark, so probably, yeah.

[@nitrax8629]

There's a good reason why the scenes feel familiar - the benchmark you are likely referring to is Final Reality, which was also created in large part by Future Crew.

[@TheRestartPoint]

@@nitrax8629 Wow that would certainly explain it then. Thanks!

[@bad.sector]

"Final Reality" - even its name was inspired by it! Several members of the Future Crew were part of making that benchmark. There was no official "third reality", but there's your unofficial one...

[@jbmcb]

The amazing thing about 2nd reality was that it was designed to run on a 486, a CPU about as powerful as the microcontroller used in the XBox controllers.

[@SuperPigCop]

This demoscene is really cool. I really enjoy these...

[@electrifiedspam]

But my cell phone needs 6 gigs of ram so the home screen scrolls smoothly....

[@GreenDayFanMT]

I am happy to see more of the commander 😊

[@jasonteknut]

This was an amazing recreation of this demo!

[@Domarius64]

I loved hearing that song played by an FM soundchip! And also I'm glad the musician used the original voice clips - I've heard remastered versions that use alternative voice clips and it's just so unsatisfying. That 3D sequence at 8:40 is bang on, can't believe this was all reverse engineered visually...

[@revelationnow]

David, if this is being output from the X16 sound chip, I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy one and make audio accessories for it. This is awesome. This is project really brings together your vision under this legendary demo.

[@Locomamonk]

this is incredible!!!! you guys are geniuses!

[@planetshadow]

Still gives me the same chills when i watched it (new) as a kid!

[@ranseus]

OMG, that music takes me back... I think the Commander X16 was just cemented in the demo scene.

[@Jdvc-yd5tx]

Holy smoke. Furnace reverse-engineers over 50 sound chips - including the Commodore VIC! I'm downloading it as we speak. 📞

[@ata000001]

Cool, I remember running the original Second Reality when it had just been released on my PC back then in 1993 here in Finland, where Future Crew also was from. I wasn't at the Assembly fest even it would have been quite close to my place. Amazing to see this running on a 8-bit CPU...

[@sotesz]

It's been so long since I heard these epic tunes...

[@th3d3wd3r]

God damn!!! That's impressive! I remember when I was a teen, running this on my 486dx2-66. Blew my mind then and blowing my mind again today

[@erbkaiser_]

This is incredible. Never would have believed a 6502 can run this.

[@adamwiz2]

Super excited about this project! Thanks for sharing!!

[@baze3SC]

I'm more of a traditionalist who prefers authentic retro computers but I admire and respect the effort that went into this, especially the soundtrack.

[@GeorgesChannel]

Great work porting this to a 6502! Amazing!

[@danielreed5199]

Made me think about "Easy AMOS" for the first time, in about 30 years for some reason.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

It's hilarious to me that back in the day, real-time 3D rendering a couple 24-sided polygons that aren't even textured was considered impressive. And yet it was. I was awed by it on my 486.

[@OSVS_Mike]

Oh the memories of seeing this for the first time back in the 90s. I actually spoke to Skaven maybe 15-some years ago. He really liked that people still remembered this demo. Looked up Future Crew on the Wiki for some great memories of the past! It was released to the demo scene on July 30, 1993 - over 30 years ago. Damn...

[@Jammet]

"Inspired" by the Future Crew is a liiiittle understatement there. It's practically a remake of the exact same thing. To the point where in the credits, I would have appreciated the credits to go to additional people like PIXEL, SKAVEN and PURPLE MOTION, where applicable, on the same screen. Beat for beat the same, inluding artworks, which is great :3. But inspired... haha! Love the show, don't be mistaken.

[@keupanen]

Someone remembers the old demo scene

[@SpiderJerusalem2342]

@@keupanen I just read, PIXEL, SKAVEN and PURPLE MOTION and couldn't figure out what you meant by "old".

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah, "inspired" is a bit of a stretch. Not to take away any of the credit where it's due, because this was amazingly well done. But one of the things about demoscene culture is also... due credit. ;-)

[@Koutsie]

I mean, Second Reality is source-available open source software nowdays so i can see how its so close to the original...

[@Grunttamer]

@@Koutsie is it using any of the original assets? I’m not familiar with the original. If they just watched it and rebuilt it scene for scene without seeing source i would say “inspired” technically fits

[@Andreas.Weller]

👏 What a recreation of a masterpiece! This has inspired me in the 90‘s and seeing such a perfect recreation of the demo on an entirely new hardware base makes me so WOW! Absolutely stunning! Guys you can absolutely be proud for this! 🫶

[@AshliBlattgold]

I don't have epilepsy but I feel like I am gonna get an epileptic seizure from this anyway

[@carguyuk7525]

Me to!

[@matrixdude7714]

Please upload more of these old golden videos. Like the apple 1 and 2.

[@dafoex]

Second Reality was probably the first demo I ever experienced and it still gives me goosebumps to this day.

[@MatarXtreme12]

First Time you have ever posted two videos in one day

[@opalpersonal]

such incredible work. i grew up in the age when iphones were becoming popular- i watched second reality for the first time on an ipad when i was a teenager, and *still* it gave me chills and got me giddy from how excellently it was put together. this did the very same. ❤

[@jovetj]

Watching a video still isn't the same as watching it live on a PC, knowing it's all being done in realtime, and that it may freeze at that one spot...

[@opalpersonal]

@@jovetj i know that, obviously that must be even more breathtaking. (and nervewracking, haha)

[@greg_takacs]

My old @ss needed this retro throwback this morning. This is awesomeness!

[@GrzegorzMatusinski]

Impressive, X16 is a very capable platform.

[@FoxFriedRice]

The X16 can produce mind boggling effects

[@Hchris101]

the FUTURE IS NOW!!

[@MrPoke]

I love 2nd Reality! It's by Skaven!

[@jovetj]

_And_ Purple Motion!

[@knuckles9250]

Love the 90s computer style startup in the beginning! Especially the floppy drive sounds!

[@bingo1105]

I had a 486DX-50 back in the day. This runs just as good as I remember.

[@perge_music]

Classic demo, don't recall it looking that smooth back on the PC. Impressive for an 8-bit machine.

[@waldokind]

The impressive thing about a demo like this is seeing YOUR machine, that’s been in your bedroom for a couple of years, never having rendered graphics close to this, to the point you’re convinced it can’t, suddenly spring to life with polygons and sound. It’s like someone cast a magic spell on your PC. That was great. Watching a video of it on my iPad is not great. A demo of hardware I’ll never own, or care to. Ho-hum

[@jovetj]

Yes! You hit the nail on the head!

[@Nighthawke70]

This demo runs silky smooth on that hardware, almost putting the Amiga to shame.

[@Psychlist1972]

Awesome to see this on the X16!

[@MurrayDagostino]

Amazing demo, well done!

[@jareksprysz]

It was like a visit from a long-unseen old friend.

[@nevadaxelizabeth]

the 3D sequence with the ship that used to say Future Crew is impressive when you realize the more limited capabilities of the 6502 compared to a 486. Bravo

[@WildkatPhoto]

very cool throwback to to the old demo days!