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As I understand it, if the OP put their chips and wires into a SNES cartridge, you could take that cartridge, plug it in, and you would see their ray tracing de

As I understand it, if the OP put their chips and wires into a SNES cartridge, you could take that cartridge, plug it in, and you would see their ray tracing demo on your stock SNES. This is just like Nintendo adding their own co-processors over the lifetime of the system, albeit with more advanced technology. If Mario Kart is running on the SNES, so is this.

Jetrel 6y ago
Perhaps one way to put it: You couldn't download this demo into a ROM image and run it on an emulator. To make it run, you'd have to beg the author of the emulator to actually support your chip. This is more than a silly, pedantic distinction; emulators are probably the way that >95% of the current SNES playerbase runs the software, and they're likely to remain that way … forever? I don't see the interest in running SNES games ever really going away, since they're fun in a timeless way (like classic books/film), so emulators that support it are likely to stick around for several centuries, barring civilizational collapse. Actual hardware's pretty close to dying out (the recent "SNES Classic" physical devices, afaik, are just neatly packaged emulators). So I think it really does matter whether it runs in an emulator or not. (Not to diminish the fairly awesome technical prowess of this hack)
- Kranar 6y ago
  That's true of probably 90% of ROM images though. To get most SNES ROMs to work you need to not only emulate the SNES console itself but also emulate the individual game's chipset. Most SNES games use one of the following expansion chipsets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... Many SNES games include one-off chipsets that common SNES emulators implement as well; for example just something simple like saving your game can't be done on an SNES and needs an expansion chip.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  > So I think it really does matter whether it runs in an emulator or not. If you were to write a SNES emulator that only emulated the console itself, it would not be able to run the many SNES games that use addon chips. SNES emulators include code that emulate the addon chips originally contained in the cartridges[1]. So, I think your test is a false one. Games run in the emulator because the emulator added emulation for the chips in the game. This game cartridge would also run on a SNES emulator if you emulated its chips. [1] Code to emulate the behavior of the DSP chip in Super Mario Kart (among many others): https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/tree/master/bsnes/sfc/dsp https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/tree/master/bsnes/sfc/dsp

Jetrel 6y ago

Perhaps one way to put it: You couldn't download this demo into a ROM image and run it on an emulator. To make it run, you'd have to beg the author of the emulator to actually support your chip. This is more than a silly, pedantic distinction; emulators are probably the way that >95% of the current SNES playerbase runs the software, and they're likely to remain that way … forever? I don't see the interest in running SNES games ever really going away, since they're fun in a timeless way (like classic books/film), so emulators that support it are likely to stick around for several centuries, barring civilizational collapse. Actual hardware's pretty close to dying out (the recent "SNES Classic" physical devices, afaik, are just neatly packaged emulators). So I think it really does matter whether it runs in an emulator or not. (Not to diminish the fairly awesome technical prowess of this hack)

Kranar 6y ago
That's true of probably 90% of ROM images though. To get most SNES ROMs to work you need to not only emulate the SNES console itself but also emulate the individual game's chipset. Most SNES games use one of the following expansion chipsets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_... Many SNES games include one-off chipsets that common SNES emulators implement as well; for example just something simple like saving your game can't be done on an SNES and needs an expansion chip.
aeturnum 6y ago
> So I think it really does matter whether it runs in an emulator or not. If you were to write a SNES emulator that only emulated the console itself, it would not be able to run the many SNES games that use addon chips. SNES emulators include code that emulate the addon chips originally contained in the cartridges[1]. So, I think your test is a false one. Games run in the emulator because the emulator added emulation for the chips in the game. This game cartridge would also run on a SNES emulator if you emulated its chips. [1] Code to emulate the behavior of the DSP chip in Super Mario Kart (among many others): https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/tree/master/bsnes/sfc/dsp https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/tree/master/bsnes/sfc/dsp