We hear the term ‘ray tracing’ thrown around more and more these days, being one of the features almost synonymous with modern, best-in-class visuals. It’s a rendering method that allows shadows and light to be portrayed in a more realistic, lifelike way, and is included as a graphics option in many current-generation games. Needless to say, it’s probably not the sort of technology that you’d imagine a 42-year-old computer could even dream of running.
However, it turns out that the trusty ZX Spectrum, released by Sinclair Research back in 1982, was capable all along, at least with the brains of Google Zürich senior software engineer Gabriel Gambetta behind it. As spotted by Hackaday (via PC Gamer), Gambetta has shared how he managed to use the Spectrum’s in-built programming language, Sinclair BASIC, to get the computer to produce a shiny, ray-traced frame.
