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Real-time ray-tracing for Super Nintendo
Real-time ray-tracing is all the rage these days, and an enterprising chip designer has created a dedicated ray-tracing expansion chip for Super Nintendo called SuperRT.
Game developer and software engineer Ben Carter used a an FPGA to design the chip, hooking it up to a real Super Nintendo cartridge much like “the Super FX chip used in titles such as Star Fox.”
Custom chip: The custom chip ray-traces so-called constructive solid geometry defined by a special instruction set that's submitted to the SuperRT by the Super Nintendo's main CPU and ray-traced using four rays per pixel. All the spicy details can be found on the project page.
Seeing is believing: There's both a short demonstration of SuperRT in action and a longer video explaining the technology in detail, and both are well worth seeing.