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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

 

[raging_chaos]

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.



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.)

That's where you are wrong in thinking these systems are using any sort of 3D polygons or that 3D is just a triangle. Quad 3D was a thing before Tri's became the standard. These classic consoles are using deformed sprites to achieve 3D. The Genesis needed less assistance achieving that type of 3D because it was nearly twice as fast as the SNES CPU. Very little examples exist but the best known demo is the Star Fox type one. What is the RT chip doing? Converting all the images to sprites the SNES can work with and then draw on screen, that's impressive.

 

[ov3rkill]

Can't wait for RTX 3DS since most of those games are in 3D.

edit: Hey look SuperRT performs better than Cyberpunk.

 

[Kwyjor]

Quad 3D was a thing before Tri's became the standard.

Yes, you're very clever.

The Genesis needed less assistance achieving that type of 3D because it was nearly twice as fast as the SNES CPU.

People have been talking about this for the last thirty years. Clock speeds are not a useful comparison when the CPUs use entirely different instruction sets.

 

[raging_chaos]

Yes, you're very clever.

People have been talking about this for the last thirty years. Clock speeds are not a useful comparison when the CPUs use entirely different instruction sets.

Except in this case it actually is, especially when dealing with assembly language. I'm not about to rehash the entire 16 bit wars for you. The slow SNES CPU was best used in combination with its fast co-processors and cartridge enhancement chips. That and this RTX chip is impressive. The Genesis did things without enhancement chips and even slower co-processors at decent frame rates that shouldn't have been possible. That's equally as impressive. Wolfenstein SNES played like crap but looked good. Duke Genesis was a slightly faster but uglier experience.

 

[Osakasan]

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

The game is full 2D. Pre-rendered, but 2D

 

[raging_chaos]

The game is full 2D. Pre-rendered, but 2D

The overhead isometric regular stages are not what people are referring to. It's the special stages with its 3D effect that is similar to the one used in Mickey Mania. 3D isn't an image made up of polygons, its one that shows clear depth, width and height. Polygon based accelerated 3D wasn't a reality until Quake came out. Before that it was all sprite based.

 

[pcwizard7]

Here my question why.... because we can

 

[Deleted User]

The overhead isometric regular stages are not what people are referring to. It's the special stages with its 3D effect that is similar to the one used in Mickey Mania.

Reminds me of what Konami did in Axelay released 1992 on the Snes.

 

[raging_chaos]

Reminds me of what Konami did in Axelay released 1992 on the Snes.

That's a good example of the SNES's Mode 7 using deformed sprites to create the background layer. The gameplay is all still 2D, but the background does have a nice effect that tries to simulate a 3D horizon. The SNES has its PPU's to thank for its hardware based effects, meanwhile the Genesis has to do it in software with raw CPU power. That's why it's amazing seeing any 3D running on the Genesis when it does appear, its done in software.

Here's a look at software based 3D basketball:


And here's early FPS shooter style 3D:

 

[1B51004]

sweet, cant wait to play mario world with better looking shadows lol

 

[realtimesave]

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?

Not only that but SNES has long been dead for about 20 years and nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to create a game using this lol. So pointless.

 

[raging_chaos]

Not only that but SNES has long been dead for about 20 years and nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to create a game using this lol. So pointless.

People like you completely miss the point. It's not about creating new games it's about enhancing existing ones the same way the MSU1 chip has.

 

[SexiestManAlive]

Not only that but SNES has long been dead for about 20 years and nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to create a game using this lol. So pointless.

whos making full on games for snes? last time i checked they make romhacks, people can use existing games for this, they dont need to make whole new ones lol

 

[Moon164]

I can't understand why keep people ask ''why ?''

Why did they port Sonic to the Super Nintendo?

Simply because it is incredible to see a game that many talked about in the 90s that did not run on the Super Nintendo now is finally running, this is incredible for those who lived the rivalry of Sega and Nintendo, at that time it was unimaginable to see Sonic running on a Super Nintendo, of course you can play Sonic on other but more current platforms, but who cares? It is simply incredible to see him on the Super Nintendo and finally dispel the myth.

Why they brought Cave Story to Sega Genesis ?

Simply because it is incredible to see a modern indie running on a much older and limited platform, in addition the possibility of being able to play with a console that I spent my childhood playing is surreal.

Why will Alwa's Awakening be released for the NES if it has already been released for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch?, Why are there still people who release games for old consoles like Mega Drive and Dreamcast ?

Because are there people who love these platforms, people who grew up playing these platforms and seeing a new game running on that platform is incredible, being able to play a new game on the platform I grew up with is surreal.

Why did someone make the Super Nintendo run Ray Tracing?

Have you ever wondered why people port Doom to multiple platforms? Or why seeing Super Mario 64 running on Playstation 2 is more impressive and draws more attention than seeing it running on Android/iOS?, nobody cares to see a modern platform running something that we already know could run anyway, but to see a console surpassing its limits to do something that was never imagined at the time, that is surreal, that is impressive. ( It is basically the same logic as the ''impossible ports'' on the Nintendo Switch for example. )

People need to stop asking "why", there are people who grew up with such old platforms and for these people it is simply incredible to see something new running on them, it is simply incredible to see something that was unimaginable for the time finally happening on that platform , that's why.

 

[Jayro]

So you're telling me that we could have had a badass-looking Starfox experience, but instead we got a 12fps dumpster fire on purpose..?

 

[raxadian]

Why did they port Sonic to the Super Nintendo?

Sonic 1 is actually quite easy to port right, is Sonic 2 and later the ones that gives you a headache when running on slower than the Sega Genesis hardware.

That's hilarious because Sonic 1 exists to show off the Sega Genesis being faster than the Super Nintendo.

 

[Jayro]

Sonic 1 is actually quite easy to port right, is Sonic 2 and later the ones that gives you a headache when running on slower than the Sega Genesis hardware.

That's hilarious because Sonic 1 exists to show off the Sega Genesis being faster than the Super Nintendo.

They really had to pull some magic out of their asses to get Sonic 1 ported though, I hear it was mostly re-written in many parts, like the physics. They're not 100% truly ported, but they're very close.

 

[smf]

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

You're wrong, I know how they worked. Some of them just compressed data to reduce cartridge costs, but the game still ran on the SNES. However SuperFX games need a SNES, but they aren't running on the SNES.

It's like when people put PC motherboards in classic computer/console cases and claim they have Windows 10 running on an Atari 2600 etc.

Why did they port Sonic to the Super Nintendo?

Why they brought Cave Story to Sega Genesis ?

Why will Alwa's Awakening be released for the NES if it has already been released for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch?, Why are there still people who release games for old consoles like Mega Drive and Dreamcast ?

I don't ask any of those, you have a real challenge of fitting those games onto different hardware.

Why did someone make the Super Nintendo run Ray Tracing?

The Super Nintendo isn't ray tracing. It's an FPGA that is running 3 50mhz cpu's (I assume ones he downloaded?) running some ray tracing software (source code available since the 80's,maybe he wrote his own?) that uses the SNES as an output device. The DE10 nano even has it's own HDMI, so he could have just output straight to a TV without going through a SNES.

I'm not sure what the challenge is.

The articles I've read are thin on the details, without that it's difficult to get excited and I don't see why anyone else is either.

Hacking a pi zero to dma a rendered scene into a snes would be more impressive to me, because it's not designed for that. A FPGA is designed exactly to do what he did with it. It's also more likely that people would build them (especially if you could load SNES games into RAM and then have the GPU emulate a cartridge interface for a cheap flash cart).

So you're telling me that we could have had a badass-looking Starfox experience, but instead we got a 12fps dumpster fire on purpose..?

Obviously not, the DE10 nano didn't exist in 1990. The processing power available today is considerably higher than what they had available back then for the price that people would pay, you'd need room size million $ computers to get close.

 

[raxadian]

They really had to pull some magic out of their asses to get Sonic 1 ported though, I hear it was mostly re-written in many parts, like the physics. They're not 100% truly ported, but they're very close.

That's because the Snes cannot emulate the Sega Genesis, the code must be changed. At least they are not atuck using an Apple II to do it.

Well, that reminds me, whatever happened to thaT Nes game maker project? I read someone was trying to make an open source version...

 

[raging_chaos]

You're wrong, I know how they worked. Some of them just compressed data to reduce cartridge costs, but the game still ran on the SNES. However SuperFX games need a SNES, but they aren't running on the SNES.

It's still clear you do not know what you are talking about or how co-processors work in parallel with a CPU. The news of this enhancement chip also isn't for you, it's for those that appreciate what the MSU-1 chip brought to existing SNES games. The community will find ways to support this chip, you can move on.

I don't think anyone here is expecting 100% brand new games to be developed for this at all. However I would like to see some ray traced lighting effects during special effects in RPGs. As said before a ray traced Star Fox would be fun to look at. The possibilities are small but welcome.