Pushing the Boundaries: How Crysis Remastered Brought Ray Tracing to the PlayStation 4
Can Old Hardware Handle the Future of Gaming Graphics?
Crysis Remastered created significant buzz in the gaming community when it was announced that the PS4 Pro version would include ray tracing, a graphics technique revolutionizing PC games but seemingly too demanding for seven-year-old console hardware. Through innovative software solutions, Crytek found a way to implement basic ray traced reflections on the aging console. However, the major compromises needed to do so showed that while impressive, this was much more a proof of concept than a harbinger of how ray tracing could be fully utilized on current generation consoles.
Sparse Voxel Octrees Enable Reflections on PS4 Pro
Crytek used a combination of techniques like sparse voxel octree global illumination to approximate ray traced lighting methods within the PS4 Pro’s hardware limitations. Sparse voxel octrees efficiently store information about the spatial relationships of objects in a 3D environment, allowing for faster queries of ray-surface intersections compared to traditional ray tracing algorithms. Crytek’s implementation of this structure facilitated techniques like screen space reflections combined with limited ray traced reflections to achieve a heightened degree of photorealism not previously possible on consoles through traditional rendering methods alone. While a breakthrough, the complexity of the voxel structure still significantly taxed the console’s aging AMD graphics processor.
Major Performance Sacrifices to Accommodate Ray Tracing
To include even basic ray tracing effects, Crytek had to make major compromises to the game’s performance on PS4 Pro. The ray tracing mode could only support a 1080p resolution, a downgrade from the checkerboard 4K most PS4 Pro enhanced titles target. More damning was the inconsistent framerate, which often dipped well below the desired 30 fps target. Players routinely experienced stuttering, hitches, and frame pacing issues when ray tracing was enabled. The already dated hardware was clearly struggling under the increased workload of on-the-fly ray tracing calculations added on top of existing rendering tasks. Higher resolutions like true 4K were simply impossible given the console’s limited processing power and memory bandwidth.
Image Quality Still Lags Behind Dedicated Hardware Solutions
While an admirable technical achievement, the image quality provided by Crysis Remastered’s software ray tracing implementation on PS4 Pro paled in comparison to what’s possible with dedicated ray tracing accelerators found in high-end PC graphics cards. Major compromises were needed just to add basic reflections, with more complex effects like ray traced shadows, ambient occlusion, and global illumination remaining out of reach entirely. The result, even at relatively low 1080p, showed visible artifacts and a noticeable lack of fidelity compared to native hardware solutions. It served to highlight how much more demanding true real-time path tracing is and how far consoles still have to go to fully support such techniques within the constraints of their specs.
Future of Ray Tracing on Consoles Depends on Hardware Advances
For ray tracing to reach its true potential and visual quality goals in console games, dedicated hardware built for the task will be required. The upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X both include ray tracing capabilities through their new graphical processors. These purpose-built silicon architectures from AMD are designed from the ground up with ray tracing in mind, whether through specialized ray tracing cores or more generalized acceleration. Their massive increases in graphics compute power over the PS4/Xbox One generation raise hopes that next-gen game ports could include ray tracing features with significantly better performance than Crysis showed was possible through software hacks alone on older consoles. However, the hardware gulf is still vast compared to high-end PC graphics cards tailor-made for the demands of real-time ray tracing. Only time will tell how close next-gen consoles can get to PCs in fully leveraging this breakthrough rendering technique.
Ray Tracing Most Useful for Single-Player Experiences
While ray tracing enables striking visual realism, its heavy performance tax makes it currently impractical for many multiplayer game experiences requiring consistent 60+ fps. The milliseconds of added latency ray tracing incurs with each frame could prove problematic competitively. This is why ray tracing has mostly been seen applied to narrative-driven single-player titles so far like Control, Metro Exodus, and Quake II RTX. For consoles still lacking dedicated ray tracing hardware, implementing the technique in fast-paced multiplayer would be essentially infeasible. Even next-gen systems may struggle depending on desired resolutions and effect complexity. Ray tracing’s true utility for games may remain limited to more cinematic third-person and first-person adventures for the foreseeable future as hardware continues enhancing its capabilities.
Outlook: Ray Tracing Going Mainstream with Next-Gen Hardware
While Crysis Remastered’s software solutions pushed the PS4 Pro to its absolute limits, the project served as proof that ray tracing could find its way to consoles, even if in a primitive form, before generation-tailored silicon was available to fully support it. The next iterations of PlayStation and Xbox debuting later this year represent the first consoles designed from the ground up with an eye toward real-time ray tracing. Looking ahead, their significant leaps in graphics muscle should allow for ray traced elements to become a standardfeature in next-gen titles instead of niche experiments.Ports of current-gen PC games may even see graphics optionsto enable the technique on the new hardware. With hardwarevendors continuing to innovate and optimize for it, ray tracingis poised to go mainstreamthis generationacrossboth PCsand consoles.The future for realistic real-time renderinghas never looked brighter.