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RTX off, RTX on! RTX on...the SNES! Developer Shironeko Labs, otherwise known as Ben Carter, has been playing around with a project idea for around a year: getting real-time raytracing to work on the Super Nintendo of all things. The culmination of his work has resulted in the SuperRT, an expansion chip, similar in function to the Super FX chip. This additional cartridge, which was made from the combination of a Super Famicom Pachinko game, a ton of cables, a shifter board, and a Cyclone V FPGA allows for the Super Nintendo to render simple objects, shadows, and reflections, in full ray-traced glory, all at a glorious resolution of 200x160.

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. The scene description allows objects to be constructed using a subset of CSG operations, using spheres and planes as the basic building blocks and then performing OR, AND and subtraction operations using them to build up the desired geometry. AABBs are also supported, although primarily for use in culling tests (they can be rendered if desired, but they have a lower positional accuracy than other primitives and thus this is not generally very useful except for debugging purposes).

Carter goes into full detail on his official website about how he got his demo to work, which involved lots of commands, conversions, and many other technical terms.

The chip also implements a number of other basic functions - there is an interface to the SNES cartridge bus, along with a small program ROM holding 32K of code for the SNES (this is constrained by the fact that the interface board currently only connects up the SNES Address Bus A lines, and thus the effective usable address space is a mere 64K, of which 32K is used for memory-mapped IO registers to communicate with the SuperRT chip). There is also a multiplication accelerator unit that lets the SNES perform 16x16bit multiply operations rapidly.

Source

 

[Osakasan]

...because outside of being a POC, it has no value? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I know some here love the "ooh, shiny" effect. I'm more of the person who asks what it can bring to the scene.

Oh, come the fuck on, you're esentially shitting on the whole demoscene community. It CAN be done, so why not? No one gets hurt.

 

[UltraSUPRA]

Next we're going to have Super Mario 64 running on the SNES.

 

[PatrickD85]

Cool, but only if they used this in its time ...

 

[Deleted member 446461]

Super Mario FX conspirators are going to have a ball with this.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

when a console from 30 years ago can run raytracing better than your main gaming PC:

EL BRUH MOMENTO EFECTO DE SONIDO NÚMERO DOS

(google translate is a blessing)

 

[smf]

Oh, come the fuck on, you're esentially shitting on the whole demoscene community. It CAN be done, so why not? No one gets hurt.

The demo scene community is more interested in things that don't seem possible. Like real time ray tracing on a superfx for example.

This is way more interesting....

when a console from 20 years ago can run raytracing better than your main gaming PC:

spoiler: it can't (& snes is 30 years old).

 

[AlexMCS]

Yes, I dabbled a little in POV-Ray back in the 90s. It's "all the rage atm" because back in the 90s it would take several minutes to render a single frame.

Consider it in context: SNES application. Yes, I know how painfully slow ray tracing is since it's a recursive tree.

 

[smf]

Consider it in context: SNES application. Yes, I know how painfully slow ray tracing is since it's a recursive tree.

It's not a snes application, the snes is basically being used as a video output. It's using modern hardware that wasn't available in the 90's.

 

[AlexMCS]

It's not a snes application, the snes is basically being used as a video output. It's using modern hardware that wasn't available in the 90's.

I got it, it's a custom chip being ran on SNES. Nevertheless, the SNES is the point of the news.

 

[pedro702]

I got it, it's a custom chip being ran on SNES. Nevertheless, the SNES is the point of the news.

nowadays chips are so small and so powerful you could put a phone chip on a cartridge and do everything a modern smartphone chip does on a snes while only outputting to the snes low rez signal to the tv, so imo its not that "revolutionary" nowadays.

 

[raging_chaos]

It's not a snes application, the snes is basically being used as a video output. It's using modern hardware that wasn't available in the 90's.

It's clear you don't understand how SNES enhancement and by extension how NES mapper chips worked.

 

[raxadian]

'm not sure what you mean. If you're thinking of Virtua Racing, then that also required an extra chip.

Sonic Flickies Island is basic 3D with no extra chip.

 

[Kwyjor]

Sonic Flickies Island is basic 3D with no extra chip.

That game is done entirely with pre-rendered sprites and has nothing to do with "3D". John Burton did several excellent videos about it. It's certainly nothing the SNES couldn't do, even without enhancement chips.

 

[Moon164]

Okay...
but...
Why?

As a POC, this is pretty cool. I just don't know what benefit it would bring to a console that is predominantly 2D games with a handful of 3D titles?

Why Not ?

 

[raging_chaos]

That game is done entirely with pre-rendered sprites and has nothing to do with "3D". John Burton did several excellent videos about it. It's certainly nothing the SNES couldn't do, even without enhancement chips.

I find it amazing you would use a GameHut video as an example, when he has two videos on his channel explaining how 3D was achieved on Toy Story. There's also Duke Nukem on the Genesis that was released in Brazil.

 

[raging_chaos]

nowadays chips are so small and so powerful you could put a phone chip on a cartridge and do everything a modern smartphone chip does on a snes while only outputting to the snes low rez signal to the tv, so imo its not that "revolutionary" nowadays.

That's not how it works, this isn't one of those cheap knockoff adapters that let you play Genesis games on SNES. Those have you hook up the TV directly to the cartridge, this RT chip is doing the heavy calculation and converting it to an SNES compatible image format. The SNES still has to apply the color palette to that image, sound, controls, programming etc.

 

[raxadian]

That game is done entirely with pre-rendered sprites and has nothing to do with "3D".

Is what it was called 3D back then, is not like Duke Nuken 3D was "real" 3D anyway.

But the Sega Genesis could actually render
3D polygons even without any special chips, like with Hard Drivin' and Star Cruising while the Super Nintendo could not.

The reason this was not used more was because A) Most of the games were still in 2D and B) It was barely enough so I didn't look that great.

 

[Kwyjor]

I find it amazing you would use a GameHut video as an example, when he has two videos on his channel explaining how 3D was achieved on Toy Story.

I don't know what you're trying to say? M. Radaxian said "the Sega Genesis could do basic 3D, the Snes could not". My point, as demonstrated by the video, is that Sonic 3D Blast only uses graphics tricks that could be done just as easily on the SNES.

 

[raging_chaos]

I don't know what you're trying to say? M. Radaxian said "the Sega Genesis could do basic 3D, the Snes could not". My point, as demonstrated by the video, is that Sonic 3D Blast only uses graphics tricks that could be done just as easily on the SNES.

The Genesis can do basic 3D, GameHut has videos showing it. Doom/Wolfenstein 3D style. Duke was done with no enhancement chips. The SNES needed the SFX chip for its Doom port.

 

[Kwyjor]

The Genesis can do basic 3D, GameHut has videos showing it. Doom/Wolfenstein 3D style. Duke was done with no enhancement chips. The SNES needed the SFX chip for its Doom port.

Yes, fine, the Genesis can do basic 3D, but what makes you think the SNES can't do the same "basic 3D"? The SNES even had its own port of Toy Story!

Yes, the SNES needed the SFX chip for its Doom port – and the Genesis needed the 32X for its Doom port. No special chips were needed for Wolfenstein on the SNES. Or Faceball 2000, for that matter.

Lawnmower Man also springs to mind, but I'm sure there are much better examples than that.

But the Sega Genesis could actually render
3D polygons even without any special chips, like with Hard Drivin' and Star Cruising while the Super Nintendo could not.

In the end, a "3D polygon" is just a triangle, and there's no need for special hardware to draw a triangle. (Lots of triangles very quickly is a different matter.)