SGI demos from long ago in the browser via WASM
13 comments
·September 22, 2025blincoln
secure
Was it vroom by any chance? A slot car racing game in space: https://nixdoc.net/man-pages/irix/man6/vroom.6.html
Video:
technothrasher
Back when I had my Indigo XS24 up and running as my main workstation, I remember they used to put out periodic "Hot Mix" demo CDs with a bunch of the latest third party software to try out. Loading the demos off the CD was excruciatingly slow, but I definitely looked forward to getting the disks in the mail.
wiz21c
Silicon Graphics was the thing (in computer graphics) in the beginning of the nineties
_joel
It's a unix system! I know this.
acdbddh
related: old demoscene demos running in the browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40241290
ucosty
I spent a lot of time as a child playing the flight simulator demo, this brought back a lot of good memories
null
ur-whale
I wish they had "Tranquility" in there, this was a really nice game on Irix.
munchlax
Everything 404?
Sad
ucosty
They seem to work through buttonfly, just not directly through the other links
networked
The maintainer changed a path, fixed the code (https://github.com/sgi-demos/sgi-demos/issues/2#issuecomment...), but forgot to update the readme. I have submitted a PR. Here are the fixed links with the original commentary:
---
Working demos
- Buttonfly: https://sgi-demos.github.io/
- Bounce: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/bounce/web/bounc...
- Ideas: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/ideas/web/ideas_...
- Insect: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/insect/web/insec...
- Jello: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/jello/web/jello_...
- Logo: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/logo/web/logo_fu...
- Twilight: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/twilight/web/twi...
Somewhat working demos
- Flight: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/flight/web/fligh... (cockpit glitches, planes too slow in web version, night mode 'shimmers', no network play")
- Newave: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/newave/web/newav... (no mesh editing, no popup menus, only wireframe)
- Arena: https://sgi-demos.github.io/sgi-demos/demos/arena/web/arena_... (no network play)
Around 1995 or 1996, a friend said he'd played a speederbike graphics/game demo running on an SGI system at some kind of touring SGI promotional event.
I've never been able to find screenshots or video of it, and was hoping it might be included here. No such luck. I don't suppose anyone remembers it?