SNES Raytracing

What the hell is this sub 30fps bullcrap and garbage graphics?
My eyes hurt just seeing this so-called attempt at ray tracing.....



/PC Master race.


:bleh:
 
Sasquach said:
What the hell is this sub 30fps bullcrap and garbage graphics?
My eyes hurt just seeing this so-called attempt at ray tracing.....



/PC Master race.


:bleh:
Click to expand...
This is a thread resurrection from 1991 when Sasquach had a 80486DX 50Mhz PC playing Duke Nukem!
 
Some more info: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020...n-unmodified-snes-revved-up-with-ray-tracing/

Guessing some don't realize what a technical challenge it is to run realtime raytracing on a 30-year-old console. I remember buying Star Fox when it first came out; it was really something special at the time, even though it looks like a low resolution slideshow today. Around that time I had friends with Amigas and it would take hours to days to render just one raytraced frame.
 
I understand the challenge, but I don't understand the point beyond just a side hobby that someone wants the challenge of doing.
 
They are using a coprocessor on the cartridge, so a good bit less impressive and impossible than getting the NES to do the work.
 
Realtime raytracing is impossible on the SNES hardware without some sort of coprocessor. There really is no point to most things, frankly... especially professional sports and playing video games... but some might find it interesting to see the SNES doing something deemed impossible.
 
12Bass said:
Realtime raytracing is impossible on the SNES hardware without some sort of coprocessor. There really is no point to most things, frankly... especially professional sports and playing video games... but some might find it interesting to see the SNES doing something deemed impossible.
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I think most would agree that the SNES is NOT doing something impossible. In fact, it's not doing it at all. They added hardware. Which is probably why there isn't much interest.

Don't me wrong, it's neat. Ray Trace all the things...because why not? But at the same time, it's just kind of a passing thing that nobody would ever really do anyway.
 
People's interests vary widely. Very few people even care about the SNES at this point, let alone hardware hacking it. I happen to enjoy hardware hacking and modification, making things go beyond what they were originally designed for. A lot of my electronic stuff has been modified/hacked, some even built by myself. However, I realize that an audience for hardware hacks like this is limited.

I'd say that realtime raytracing on a home console was basically inconceivable when the SNES was designed in the late 1980s. At the time even high powered SGI workstations could barely raytrace and their rasterized 3D abilities were rudimentary at best. So, I admire the vision and ingenuity of someone who thought it would be fun to give the SNES the ability to raytrace and made it work. Those who don't find such things interesting are welcome to scroll over to the next thread....
 
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12Bass said:
Realtime raytracing is impossible on the SNES hardware without some sort of coprocessor. There really is no point to most things, frankly... especially professional sports and playing video games... but some might find it interesting to see the SNES doing something deemed impossible.
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To me, it just doesn't add anything.

If you put a coprocessor on a Vectrex, there is a point because you can make arcade quality vector games run on a home console with a real vector display.

For the SNES (or any other raster console), there just isn't any point to it.
 
I mean that's how most NES and SNES games worked, the more demanding ones all had custom chips that let them do more.

The super FX series of games like stunt racer and star fox are the best example with their super FX chips. You could have thought of them as being a graphics card (cartridge) addon that happened to have the game installed on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips

The list of Super NES enhancement chips demonstrates the overall design plan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, whereby the console's hardware designers had made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console. This standardized selection of chips was available to increase system performance and features for each game cartridge. As increasingly superior chips became available throughout the SNES's retail market years, this strategy originally provided a cheaper and more versatile way of maintaining the system's market lifespan when compared to Nintendo's option of having included a much more expensive CPU or a more obsolete stock chipset.

As a result, various enhancement chips were integrated into the cartridges of select game titles. The presence of an enhancement chip is most often indicated by 16 additional pins on either side of the original pins, 8 to each side
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aviphysics said:
To me, it just doesn't add anything.

If you put a coprocessor on a Vectrex, there is a point because you can make arcade quality vector games run on a home console with a real vector display.

For the SNES (or any other raster console), there just isn't any point to it.
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Well, there are limits to it.

There are the cartridge data rate limits. The inherent limits of the video hardware (so resolution and color depth). Also there are limits to the amount of power that the SNES console could deliver to a chip on a cartridge.

I think this is a great "what if" technology scenario. Obviously it's not something that's going to pick up a ton of steam, but cool none the less.

Hell, "virtual" add-on chips have been made for the SNES in the form of the MSU-1 which essentially opens the cartridge memory map to 4gb, basically giving you a SNES DVD of sorts. This "chip" that was developed in software now exists within FPGA hardware on things like the SNES EverDrive cartridge, so it can be used on real hardware. So old games can be patched to play CD quality music and stream FMV (like taking the Chrono Triggers OST, a SNES ROM, and the Chrono Trigger FMV from the Playstation release).

I think something like the RT chip may find it's uses with niche audiences in the future. It won't be as widely supported as MSU-1, but it opens up some cool possibilities.
 
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