The Super Nintendo can do Ray Tracing too...with a little help.

[Krenum]

The age old rallying cry that "Sega Genesis does what Ninten-don't" might finally be coming to an end.


If you've ever wondered exactly how far a Super Nintendo could be pushed, today's surprise reveal of a brand-new SNES cartridge hack, as made by a single engineer, is for you. Behold: the SuperRT chip, a proof of concept of how the "SuperFX" idea of the '90s might have worked with unlimited budgets.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020...n-unmodified-snes-revved-up-with-ray-tracing/



Expansion chips could be found in SNES games like Killer Instinct & Starfox, which reflected their price at launch.

 

[FlawleZ]

I'm more impressed with what this guy has done on the SNES using RT than anything we've seen on modern PC or console.

 

[Aireoth]

Its cooler than cool, its ice cold.

 

[Krenum]

Can you imagine what this would have been like in the 90's had it actually been developed? It would have been otherworldly. They were already halfway there with the Expansion chips.

 

[Aireoth]

It would have taken graphic development in another direction, maybe we would have swapped PhysX with it and only just now developing physics tech.

 

[WorldExclusive]

Can you imagine what this would have been like in the 90's had it actually been developed? It would have been otherworldly. They were already halfway there with the Expansion chips.

John Carmack would have bowed to that persons feet.

 

[DukenukemX]

Nvidia is going to stop supplying this guy GPU's because he didn't test the Super Nintendo with modern games.

 

[vegeta535]

Honestly that is pretty damn impressive for a SNES. I am sure it wasn't practical to use in a real game. I remember all the SFX game did chug a lot.

 

[4saken]

ok, yeah not easily impressed, but thats pretty slick.

 

[GSDragoon]

When can I get an emulator to play snes games with ray tracing?

 

[Krazy925]

Was prepared for disappointment and was pleasantly surprised lol

 

[Comixbooks]

This is really Star Fox

 

[Krenum]

When can I get an emulator to play snes games with ray tracing?

I don't know if it would be possible. Its very technical. Emulators use high end emulation, less accurate. Low end is much more difficult. The expansion chips were designed to one specific process, specific to the hardware. Kind of like the APU's of today. I suppose you could write a program to tell modern day graphics hardware to do RT on consoles though but I would assume you'd have to re-code the entire game.

 

[DukenukemX]

I don't know if it would be possible. Its very technical. Emulators use high end emulation, less accurate. Low end is much more difficult. The expansion chips were designed to one specific process, specific to the hardware. Kind of like the APU's of today. I suppose you could write a program to tell modern day graphics hardware to do RT on consoles though but I would assume you'd have to re-code the entire game.

Uh... yea... that's been done. Like, a while ago done. Super Nintendo no, but has been done on CEMU.

 

[Krenum]

Uh... yea... that's been done. Like, a while ago done. Super Nintendo no, but has been done on CEMU.

I was more or less talking about implementation in low level emulation or LLE using RT, which I don't think would be possible, it would be like trying to translate an alien language in a software to hardware sense, rather than CEMU which is high (HLE) today's hardware already being there. Its good to see that they finally implemented it in CEMU, I hadn't been following it for quite sometime.

The CEMU version is different, it's just adding RT coding to the game. The SuperRT is implemented above through hardware to hardware via the SNES's ability to recognize and use the superfx chips which were used in some of its games.

 

[MaZa]

Uh... yea... that's been done. Like, a while ago done. Super Nintendo no, but has been done on CEMU.

Wait, I can play BOTW with Raytracing!? Time for another playthrough I guess.