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Finding the BEST sine function for Nintendo 64

Kaze Emanuar · 418.1K views · 2023-06-24 · 26:41

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Overview

Kaze Emanuar searches for the best sine approximation for the Nintendo 64, comparing the lookup tables in Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time with polynomial alternatives. It walks through numerics and 3rd, 4th and 5th order approximations.

On Hacker News

Cited in discussions of sine implementations and whether lookup tables beat computation on memory-bound hardware.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Software performance & optimizationGame programming & enginesGame history & retro gaming
Search by tags
nintendo 64mario 64trigonometryoptimizationlookup tables

What people said

qingcharles · 2024-08 · Recommendation

Yeah, I used a ton of trig tables for software renderers in the late 80s/early 90s, but I'm just throwing ideas out there, since I've seen a lot of really great optimizations recently that were mostly missed during that time. This guy puts a lot of work into figuring out if there is a faster way to do trig calcs on the N64 than was used in SM64 (spoiler: there is): [VIDEO] Jez (CEO of Argonaut) once offered me an interview for the Starfox/DSP team, so I almost worked on this thing. He was very active on the coding groups on Usenet around that time.

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qingcharles · 2024-08 · Recommendation

This is the video that got me thinking: [VIDEO] I was writing software texturers etc in the late 80s/early 90s, and even recently I've seen x86 people humble me with all sorts of info that I had no idea about at the time, concerning pipelining etc. I would just sit all day randomly reordering assembler instructions and reprofiling teapot renders to see if anything would move the needle.

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eska · 2024-03 · Recommendation

You might also find this video interesting: "Finding the BEST sine function for Nintendo 64" [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Kaze Emanuar, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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