Why ray tracing

If you've ever wondered what Super Mario 64 with ray tracing would look like, we've got good news for you.At first thought, Super Mario 64's incredibly old texture designs might not pair so well with ray tracing, but there you'd be sadly mistaken. In the video just below, YouTuber Dario shows us what Super Mario 64 looks like with ray tracing enabled on a RTX 3090 graphics card, and it's surprisingly sharp.It turns out these ray tracing features for Super Mario 64 are part of a community modding effort to get the game running on PC. Last year, avid Super Mario fans were able to get the classic Nintendo game running on PC, like you can see in the video just below, effectively giving it a fresh coat of paint with an updated look through PC emulation.Ray tracing being implemented in the unofficial PC port of Super Mario 64 is just the latest in a long line of community efforts around the Italian plumber through emulation. It's a scene where a lot of crazy things have occurred over the … [Read more...] about Super Mario 64 gets a ray tracing makeover on PC

If you've ever wanted to play a 1996 game with 2021 visual effects, I've got good news for you. As picked up by Nintendo Life , the Super Mario 64 PC port that Nintendo tried to shut down last year is still going strong, and one modder is working on a version of the game with ray-traced reflections and lighting effects. The video is a couple months old, though it's still the most recent update on the ray-traced Mario 64 project. The modder is named Darío Samo , and the video shows Super Mario 64 running on an RTX 3090. As Darío points out in the video title, it's a $1500 GPU being used to run a 25-year-old game. While the YouTube video showcases Wet-Dry world in its shallow-water mode, with some lighting effects provided by electricity-covered Amps and fire-spewing Keronpa Balls, Darío has also shared videos of other levels on Twitter. The most recent update shows the red-and-blue fire lanterns of the castle's basement, while an earlier video shows some of the complex … [Read more...] about Even Super Mario 64 Has Ray Tracing Now

Remember when netbooks were a thing? If you would have told me back then that, for around the same money, laptops in a decade would be capable of playing games with ray-traced visuals, I never would have believed it. Yet here we are living in that reality, courtesy in part to deals like this one—an Evoo notebook marked down to $299 at Walmart (save $200) that could actually be turned into a viable gaming laptop.The other part of the equation is GeForce Now. On its own, this Evoo system does not have the anywhere near the necessary pixel-pushing grunt to play ray-traced games. But Nvidia's cloud gaming service takes most of the pressure off of local hardware, so even low-end PCs can join in the fun, including ones with integrated graphics.Bargain priced cloud gaming candidateEvoo 15.6-Inch Ultra Thin Laptop | 1080p | Core i7 7560U | 8GB RAM | 256GB SSD | $499 $299 at Walmart (save $200)View DealThis is a 15.6-inch laptop with a 1080p display. It's powered by a 2-core/4-thread … [Read more...] about This $299 laptop is a super affordable way to play games on GeForce Now

A report from gaming site Wccftech claims that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card will come out February 25 at 9 AM ET / 6 AM PT. Nvidia has been releasing its 30-series graphics cards at a steady clip over the past few months, and the 3060 will be their cheapest offering yet for this generation. The card comes with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and supports ray-tracing.Nvidia previously said that the RTX 3060 would release later in February, but this report is the first indication of a concrete release date. The report did not cite any specific source. Though the card has not been released yet, a Redditor posted a picture of a Gigabyte 3060 RTX they claimed to have bought from a store in a cryptocurrency mining subreddit. That user posted some of the card's technical specs, but it's unclear if they're reliable.Though the RTX 3060 has an MSRP of $330, the actual pricing will depend heavily on availability and specific manufacturer. Indeed, the RTX 30-series has become ground zero for the … [Read more...] about Nvidia RTX 3060 Launch Date Revealed, According To Report

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart launches on PlayStation 5 on 11th June 2021, developer Insomniac has announced. Insomniac describes the game as "a brand-new full-length adventure". The new trailer is below: Here's the official blurb: "When the evil Dr. Nefarious uses a device that can access alternate dimensions to find a galaxy where he always wins, Ratchet and Clank are separated. As they try to re-unite, they will meet a new Lombax resistance fighter, explore new and familiar locales (but with new dimensional twists!), and wield a whole new arsenal of out of this world weapons." Pre-order bonuses include an early unlock for the Carbonox armour from Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (2003), updated with high-definition materials, lighting responses, and ray-traced reflections, and an early unlock for the Pixelizer weapon, the retro-blaster from Ratchet & Clank (2016), also updated visually for the PS5 console. Also of note: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has the … [Read more...] about Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart hits PS5 in June 2021