Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/17/realtime-raytracing-on-the-snes.html
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really lends credence to my opinion that the snes was the last truly great video game console
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So, basically, it turns an SNES into an Amiga?
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You say that like it’s a bad thing.
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Yes, Amiga could do raytracing, but not in realtime. The SNES project claims to manage 20fps.
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As the the author of Juggler explains,
“Each image requires the calculation of 64,000 light rays and takes approximately 1 hour to generate”.
Here it is running in real time, on your PC.
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I’m not saying it like it is a bad thing, I’m saying it like it is a thing. I loved the Amiga, and the SNES, but as amazing as it might be, I don’t see the “wow” factor.
This amuses me because of the fact of how Nvidia keeps saying their RT technology is real raytracing when in fact it’s a form of rasterization (still nice but not raytracing). Whereas we got nerds playing with ancient technology doing real time raytracing for real. 
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so quake rtx is a lie?
i think the rtx does real raytracing, it just doesn’t trace the entire scene. it divides it up into chunks or something…and works from the eye (yeah, through the pixel raster ) back to the lights. it’s still tracing the rays though. ( maybe that optimization is technically called ray casting? )
I’ve heard the explanation that RTX raytraces a fraction of the way, and uses AI to construct (or perhaps denoise) the final image.
As an added bonus, it doesn’t double as a smoker for VR/AR fans who are coming too early to the party to have hardware accommodate them in under 1W dissipation.
I can understand that. I’m personally always overly impressed by dumb hacks to old hardware to make it do things that it wasn’t designed for. Tom 7’s reverse emulation comes to mind:
I think it’s more about what goes into making the art than the art itself sort of thing.
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Okay, this I can respect.
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