Best of 2015

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2015. 119 posts.

Games & Graphics
11

Raytracing a Black Hole

It's now clear I'm on a Black Hole binge (I can stop when I want, by the way). They're endlessly fascinating. My recent interest was in particular focused on simulating visualizations of the Schwarzschild geometry. I was preoccupied by the problem of generating a decent accurate representation of how the curvature of…

12

Breaking the fourth wall with Minecraft

Update 23/11/2015 - I’ve got many requests about the WiFi bulbs. You can find them on dx.com. Enjoy! Recently I started playing Minecraft, again. I find vanilla Minecraft somewhat boring, so I always look out for modpacks. After searching for new modpacks, I stumpled upon FTB Horizons: Daybreaker. Looking at the…

27

NES graphics – Part 1

Released in 1983, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) home console was a cheap, yet capable machine that went on to achieve tremendous success. Using a custom designed Picture Processing Unit (PPU) for graphics, the system could produce visuals that were quite impressive at the time, and still hold up fairly well…