The Super-est SuperFX: An unmodified SNES, revved up with ray tracing [Updated]
The SuperRT project, developed by Japanese engineer and game programmer Ben Carter. That's an FPGA board connected via wires and breadboards to a standard SNES cartridge. [credit: Ben Carter ]
If you've ever wondered exactly how far a Super Nintendo could be pushed, today's surprise reveal of a brand-new SNES cartridge hack, as made by a single engineer, is for you. Behold: the SuperRT chip, a proof of concept of how the "SuperFX" idea of the '90s might have worked with unlimited budgets.
As developed by Ben Carter, an engineer with game-programming credits in game series like Harry Potter, FIFA, and even the 3DS port of Star Fox 64, the SuperRT project delivers pure ray-tracing performance on existing, unmodified SNES hardware. While the SuperRT looks quite unwieldy as a home project, with wires jutting out every which way, you could conceivably slap it into any SNES purchased at a store, then watch it manage real-time light, reflections, and shadows with zero rasterization. It additionally can generate 3D shapes like spheres and planes, then have them intersect in additive fashion to create custom shapes.
The result is a remarkably '90s-looking CGI demonstration, with circular shapes and planes adding to and subtracting from each other while smothered in large swaths of primary colors. This is all the stuff of intense mathematical calculations, not high-res texture trickery enabled by a glut of VRAM. Yet even without realistic textures or smooth color gradients, the realistic light-bounce results and accurate reflections (including effects like inverted concave mirrors) make the scene look particularly alive.
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