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                       NEW TREND - FALCON PRODUCTIONS
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NEW TREND belonged to  the first german  groups that released  demo stuff on the
Atari Falcon. Their first demo was released in August 1993 at the 68oXo Party, a
party that was organized by some Amiga groups and White Status from Atari. There
they released the demo...

...When Dreams Become Reality

This demo seems to be a metamorphosis of the  late ST and early Falcon demos. It
brings several effects that were new to the Atari scene, together  with the good
sound the Falcon offers, but  also together with  graphics painted on the ST and
effects ported  from the ST. Anyway, it had  made the second  place in the compo
and only lost against LAZER's "Warum".

The demo  features a technoing  soundtrack composed  by Celtic Of Aura  and some
nice but also some not  so good grafix by Ice Cube. They seem to be done for the
ST originally. The demo  runs like several  ST multiparts, bringing an intro and
later on a break screen where you'll be informed about the things coming up next
and so  this demo  brings effects  like... line vector  chessboard, a raytracing
ball (that was  a very often used effect in the early Falcon days), keftales and
shadebobs, magnetic line  vectors and  as highlight  some  texture mapped vector
cube. After all  it isn't a  bad demo in comparison with  the other  releases of
that time but today you only would yawn  and to say the truth, for those effects
you don't need a Falcon, since all of them were released on ST as well, the only
difference is the missing colour depth.

But while this demo was  still very close  to other releases  of that time, with
their second demo they already  have lost a lot of ground and the contact to the
high end coders from LAZER. So the title of this demo is some kind of reality...

...Strange Circumstances

This demo already  tried to squeeze out the  Falcon a bit more  and to underline
that it is a demo for Falcon, you get  a raytraced intro sequence, together with
a nice soundtrack by  Stax of Lazer. But not only the surroundings on the grafix
side are much more  Falcon-a-like, no, they  also brought  a lot of effects that
weren't  possible on  ST anymore  and showed up  that you were watching a Falcon
demo now. I don't mean  the effects  that have  their origin on the ST, that are
still  included very  numerous, such  as delayed  and masked  line vectors, dots
tunnel, keftales, lightsourced  and transparend  filled vectors, dots spheres or
the rgb interference bars. But it features also effects like a glas ball rolling
over  a raytraced  picture, rgb  textured ball, rgb vector  balls or  plasma and
bitmap distorter.

But after all this demo had a hard stand  against the other demos on  the Falcon
competition  at the  Fried Bits 2, just remember  that were  demos like the very
legendary  "Autowaschen Verboten" and  "Plastikk Vibrations" released there, and
those demos showed the high end of Falcon demo coding  at this time. Furthermore
the demo was shown in an earlier version on the DCC 2 held two months before.
This was the main  reason for me and others that were on that party  as well, to
vote for the other releases, since NEW TREND already have won a Jaguar with this
demo in Dresden, so why giving it in another competition as well?!

Conclusion?
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The Falcon  demo scene did big  steps since  this demos  were released, and esp.
"Strange Circumstances" was outdated in parts at the time it was released. Those
demos are for collectors  only nowadays, since there isn't much to see you can't
see in other and better demos as well.
Just  "When Dreams Become Reality" has  got some laurels to  be one of the first
multipart demos on Falcon ever (it's  the second that  was released at all!) and
on hand of this demo you can  redraw the movements of the  Falcon scene from its
early beginning, you can  check the  evolution of  Falcon demos from  the  first
small steps to the todays hardware killers.
So after all, if you're hunting for any demo bit that got released on the Falcon
you have to get them, sure, but if you're only going  to have the latest bits on
your harddisk, you don't miss anything if you don't download them...

.tSCc.                                                          moondog . o3/2k2
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