What you need to know
- Crysis Remastered is coming to current gen consoles like the Xbox One and Playstation 4, with the Switch version already released.
- It's an impressive upgrade over the original, but a big surprise is how ray tracing will come to the Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro.
- Crytek is using clever software technologies to enable ray tracing without the necessary hardware, albeit with a performance loss.
- Digital Foundry took a look at the implementation, and came away very impressed with what Crytek was able to pull off.
Crysis Remastered is coming to Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles on September 18, and a new report from Digital Foundry reveals an impressive facet of this remastered game: ray tracing running on current gen consoles like the Xbox One X. Suffice to say, Digital Foundry's early look shows an impressively good looking game that uses software tricks instead of hardware acceleration to pull off ray tracing.
Digital Foundry was able to get a good look at Crysis Remastered running in an early build on the Xbox One X, with ray tracing turned on in all its glory, and true to its name the game was able to pull off realistic reflections and shadows using nothing but software techniques baked into Crytek's Cryengine. It looks fantastic, and shows that the Xbox One X (and the Playstation 4 Pro) both still have some oomph to speak of. There are some limitations, however.
As mentioned, real time ray tracing is only coming to the "flagship" consoles, as in the Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro, and there will be some compromises. The Xbox One X restricts the resolution to a dynamic 1080p and tries to hit 30fps, while the Playstation 4 Pro has to go even lower to sub-1080p levels in order to pull off ray tracing.
There will be other modes to choose from, with a "visual" mode hitting 4K resolutions and 30fps on the One X, and ~1800p resolutions on the PS4 Pro. There will also be a "performance" mode that is the standard 1080p resolution on the base consoles, but with an unlocked framerate to take advantage of more powerful hardware.
It's still early days, but if Crytek is able to enable real time ray tracing on current gen hardware using software, who knows what will become possible once the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 become the new norm.
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Zachary Boddy is the Minecraft Expert and a News Writer for Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life, and have been freelancing for Windows Central and its sister sites since 2019, with a focus on Xbox and PC gaming. You can find Zachary on Twitter @BoddyZachary.
