When games like Wolfenstein 3D debuted in the early 90s, their raycasted 3D graphics seemed like a dramatic leap forward compared to most side-scrolling games of the time.

Fast forward three decades, and most mobile phones have powerful 3D accelerators that make games from even a few years ago look unsophisticated. But PJRC forum member coelacant1 has brought back this classic software rendering technique with a custom rendering engine for the Teensy 4.0. Rather than rendering 3D objects on a monitor, coelacant1’s ProtoTracer is designed for use with LED matrices, such as those found in their own line of LED masks. Converters for 3D FBX and OBJ files, as well as 2D PNGs, BMPs, JPEGs and more allow the rendering and animation of numerous assets on arbitrary LED hardware. Source code and instructions, as well as links to the aforementioned conversion tools can all be found in the project’s GitHub repo.