Nostalgia time! The early '90s were a golden era for the demoscene. In 1993, Second Reality hit like a bombshell for all of us messing around with computers and coding. No 3D acceleration back then, just CPU and raw code. Future Crew dropped their demo at Assembly, and a wave of inspiration spread across Europe. Every kid into programming, PCs, and video games started dreaming about real-time graphics, trying to replicate the magic of that legendary Finnish group. Second Reality was the absolute peak of real-time graphics, and those guys were legit rockstars.

Some of the effects shown in the demo were already classics, popping up everywhere. Feeling nostalgic, I rewrote a few of them in Shadertoy a while back. Of course, nowadays, it’s much more simple to do in modern GLSL compared to the raw assembly of the early '90s.

Here are some effects that were staples of the demoscene and often seen in cracked game intros. You can spot some of these in Second Reality too.

Fire

Legend has it this effect was discovered by accident. I kinda believe it.

Plasma

Super simple to implement (nowadays). Back then, it was everywhere. Just a bunch of sine functions summed together. Second Reality implements a very fine version of this effect.

Moire patterns

Check out the Second Reality version.

Rotozoom

Also in Second Reality ;).

See you at Assembly 1994!