Crysis Remastered will beat next-gen consoles to the punch with Ray Tracing on Xbox One and PS4

The Verge has already reported that Crysis Remastered would support ray tracing if you had the PC hardware to run it. However, ahead of the release on PC and current-gen consoles, Crytek announced last week that, for the first time, in this console generation, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will offer ray-tracing support — because it’ll appear in the current-gen console versions of Crysis Remastered.

Crytek’s CryEngine provides software-based ray tracing, allowing current-gen hardware to support the feature. Back in 2019, the game studio showed off the Neon Noir Tech demo, which, according to Crytek, was developed using a modified version of CryEngine 5.5. Software-based ray tracing isn’t remotely new; most recently, Nvidia added the feature to GTX cards in 2019, but the experience was subpar compared to using the company’s more recent RTX cards with dedicated ray-tracing hardware.

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that can create lifelike lighting, reflections, and shadows in games. The next generation of consoles — the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S — will include hardware-accelerated ray tracing because it’s a feature of the AMD RDNA 2 GPUs each system will be using.

Eurogamer’s technical breakdown outlet Digital Foundry had the chance to visit Crytek in Germany and did a technical analysis of Crysis Remastered on the Xbox One X with ray tracing enabled. As the outlet notes, while this is a technical achievement for both Sony and Microsoft’s Pro consoles, it might not be the way you want to play the game. Without ray tracing, the PS4 Pro can run at 1800p and 2160p on the Xbox One X, but it dials back to under 1080p on PS4 Pro and 1080p and under 30fps on Xbox One X with ray tracing enabled. Water reflections in the game will also not include ray tracing.

Crysis Remastered arrives on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on September 18th.

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