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Image: Ben Carter
This might be hard to believe, but someone has figured out how to get real-time ray tracing running on a Super Nintendo. Game developer and software engineer Ben Carter has published a blog article on how he pulled the feat off, which was accomplished by a custom chip akin to the Super FX coprocessors used in hit titles such as Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.
“The SuperRT chip constructs the scene using a specialised command language which is executed by one of three parallel execution units on the chip – essentially specialised CISC processors – to perform ray intersection tests,” Carter explained.
“[…] The renderer casts up to four rays per screen pixel, calculating direct shadows from a directional light source and a single reflection bounce...
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