If you remember the life of the Sega Saturn, not after the fact, then you might remember the release of a series of amazing titles. Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Power Slave. Those three titles were developed by one company, Lobotomy Software, at least for the Sega Saturn. All three were doing things that only Sega could come close to doing on the Saturn hardware. Now, a fan is showing off how well the Saturn hardware can do something that was impossible for most professional developers with official software development kits. Wait, no this was Sega, VERY few developers had official SDK’s to work with on the Saturn – I believe Lobotomy were working on their own skills as only large companies like Capcom got kits.
Sorry for the bad attempt at updating an advertising style that Sega used later in marketing their Genesis (remember, “Sega Does what Nintendon’t”?). Anyhow, back to the subject, ray tracing on the Sega Saturn.
Ray tracing is simply how light interacts with the environment. It was not something the Sega Saturn was inherently designed to support. Ray tracing was still in its infancy when the 32-bit era was developing. Both consoles were in development for years before ray tracing gained prominence in the PC 3D card market.
I am not sure how XL2 over on YouTube is getting these results on the Sega Saturn. Check out the above embedded video. Pay attention to about the one minute mark, here we start to see some serious ray tracing effects in real time. Not a video, not a an animation but real time interactive scenes.
That is stupidly impressive. Sure, it is not on par with the 3D that 3DfX was pulling off with their Voodoo cards. A Sega Saturn still doesn’t cost what one of those cards cost today. Though they are close, the Saturn is slightly cheaper unless you go for the lowest end Voodoo 3.
The point is, for what the Sega Saturn brought to the table, this is impressive. I just hope we get to see this in action in some games. Maybe even this tech being available somehow, maybe an SDK, for others to use.
Check out what the Saturn can do I the right hands and join me in marveling at it.
