5 ms·

> My favorite "wtf how is this possible" Mine are from the demo scene. Second Reality, free-flying in 3D in a time where running Doom taxed machines. The 8088

by Beldin 5y ago

> My favorite "wtf how is this possible" Mine are from the demo scene. Second Reality, free-flying in 3D in a time where running Doom taxed machines. The 8088MHz demo: 1024 colors on CGA. 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. That sort of thing.

tombert 5y ago
Just looked it up...holy crap! I didn't think it was possible to get that level of color depth in CGA.
kingcharles 5y ago
Second Reality has always been my favourite demo of all time. I guess the CGA demo is working by very quickly overwriting the display buffer and switching the palette, using Persistence of Vision. I did the same thing on VGA in 640x480x256 color mode to get 24-bit color in the late 80s.
- thristian 5y ago
  It's wilder than that: it hacks up the CGA text mode so instead of drawing all 8 scanlines of each character, it draws the first scanline twice then moves to the next character. Then, it carefully chooses characters, foreground and background colours that (when combined) generate an NTSC composite signal with the required colours in it: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/ https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Thanks for the link. As an old INT 10h man myself, this was a great blast from the past.
pezezin 5y ago
> 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. Do you mean Elevated? It is actually 4 kB, even more impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938
- Beldin 5y ago
  I absolutely did! Thanks for the link and oh man... getting that done in 4k.... I'm tempted to download the YouTube video just for a size comparison. At any rate: stunning.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    Incidentally, source code is available for both Elevated and Second Reality: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source
anitil 5y ago
I really like 'A Mind is Born' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 The summary of it's development could be summarised with "It's LFSRs all the way down"

by Beldin 5y ago

tombert 5y ago

Just looked it up...holy crap! I didn't think it was possible to get that level of color depth in CGA.

kingcharles 5y ago

Second Reality has always been my favourite demo of all time. I guess the CGA demo is working by very quickly overwriting the display buffer and switching the palette, using Persistence of Vision. I did the same thing on VGA in 640x480x256 color mode to get 24-bit color in the late 80s.

thristian 5y ago
It's wilder than that: it hacks up the CGA text mode so instead of drawing all 8 scanlines of each character, it draws the first scanline twice then moves to the next character. Then, it carefully chooses characters, foreground and background colours that (when combined) generate an NTSC composite signal with the required colours in it: https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-illustrated/ https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. As an old INT 10h man myself, this was a great blast from the past.

pezezin 5y ago

> 64Kb demo generating really good mountain landscape. Do you mean Elevated? It is actually 4 kB, even more impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938

Beldin 5y ago
I absolutely did! Thanks for the link and oh man... getting that done in 4k.... I'm tempted to download the YouTube video just for a size comparison. At any rate: stunning.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  Incidentally, source code is available for both Elevated and Second Reality: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source https://github.com/in4k/rgba_tbc_elevated_source

anitil 5y ago

I really like 'A Mind is Born' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8 The summary of it's development could be summarised with "It's LFSRs all the way down"