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As someone who has seen this effect before, but was unclear how it was done, this article is very "and now draw the rest of the owl". They define a basic equation, it's about what I expected, but the end shader code doesn't use it in that form, and I found it pretty difficult to parse, I can't say I'm much better off in the end.
The article sums up quite well which principles are at play here. The fun part it's suggesting (without words), is either to pick it apart and see what each part does, play around with the constants in there, or start from scratch and roll your own... (all with the Shadertoy linked below the article maybe?)
I would say most interesting texts (articles, books, school, ...) should leave stuff up to the reader's mind to figure out. That's how someone really learns. Versus pre-baked stuff like television etc.
If something does not resonate at first that's pretty normal. You could still take it apart and start investigating words or concepts that ring no bell, for example: waves, interference, demoscene, owls, Feynman.
Enjoy! ;)
What I usually do in 2026 is copy the code and article and have Claude clarify the unclear parts for me. then is ok.
It’s early February. Have you really read so many articles you couldn’t understand in one month that you have a “usual” way of dealing with it? You should consider whether you would benefit from curating your sources better, or if use of AI as a crutch has already decayed your ability to understand stuff on your own unrecoverably…
But that's sort of the author's job: if they wish to publish an article on a topic, they should make it both comprehensive and comprehensible.
All I hear is the music from Second Reality (the plasma cube part).
Every once in a while, at random times in life, I hear "I am not an atomic playboy" in my head.
I wonder what would happen to that music style if you went 16-bit/44.1 kHz with the samples. Has something like this been tried?
I assume the 'grunginess' is a big part of what makes it work, but I'm also curious.
Someone did a complete rewrite of it in js - https://covalichou.github.io/second-reality-js/
Love seeing plasma explained again. It’s wild how a few sines and cosines can still look this organic decades later. Feels very demoscene-pure: simple math, clever color mapping, and suddenly you’ve got motion and depth. Also cool to see specular highlights layered on top, old tricks, modern hardware.
Plasma-Pong was a great game
Specular is a cool addition!
Loved the intro but that code sample could've used proper variable names.
Would have been awesome if there was step by step visualization where simple color transforms slowly upgraded until you get final result for easier understanding of what each thing is doing.
Otherwise quite hard to visualize changes in you head.
Exactly. Like someone stated, it was a bit like "draw the rest of the fucking owl"
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code