Monday, September 18th 2023
Spider-Man 2's Ray Tracing Feature Always On
Developers at Insomniac Games have confirmed that Spider-Man 2's ray tracing feature will be running as standard/by default within the PlayStation 5 version—a player's adjustments of graphical performance settings will have no bearing on this being turned on or off. Mike Fitzgerald, Insomniac's director of core technology, shared technical information in an interview with IGN, although he stopped short of making any promises for an inevitable PC conversion—gamers on that platform will likely be waiting another 18 months post-October 20. It is possible that Nixxes Software has been contracted to work on a port, given their recent-ish track record. The Insomniac dev cites advanced experience gained by working on past titles—notably Spider-Man Remastered, Miles Morales, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart—as the main factor behind the confident push into implementing an "always-on" ray tracing graphical feature. Fitzgerald stated: "We've really gotten to leverage everything we've seen in developing those games."
He continued: "Our performance mode for this title has ray tracing on by default. We've really expanded ray traced reflections throughout the game. It's on the water and the oceans and really gives a more realistic picture everywhere...For this game we're really able to deliver (ray tracing) as a baseline performance mode. There's no mode of this game that has the ray tracing turned off, no need for it. We've really figured out how to deliver what we feel like is the right Spider-Man visuals and we want to make sure every player is seeing that." Fitzgerald also praises PlayStation 5's storage solution—SSDs allow for "faster traversal" across the New York City environment. Players can look forward to traversing the urban landscape at about "three times as fast" as the pace experienced in Spider-Man 1.
Sources:
IGN, Eurogamer
He continued: "Our performance mode for this title has ray tracing on by default. We've really expanded ray traced reflections throughout the game. It's on the water and the oceans and really gives a more realistic picture everywhere...For this game we're really able to deliver (ray tracing) as a baseline performance mode. There's no mode of this game that has the ray tracing turned off, no need for it. We've really figured out how to deliver what we feel like is the right Spider-Man visuals and we want to make sure every player is seeing that." Fitzgerald also praises PlayStation 5's storage solution—SSDs allow for "faster traversal" across the New York City environment. Players can look forward to traversing the urban landscape at about "three times as fast" as the pace experienced in Spider-Man 1.
15 Comments on Spider-Man 2's Ray Tracing Feature Always On
On PC, it seems like RT is often enabled to sort of tick a box and not integrated to make a specific aspect of the game better without sacrificing too performance. With that approach you can end up with a huge performance impact but with a limited visual uplift if your game isn't suited to take advantage of all the different features. For example, you can turn on all of the RT stuff in Fortnite, but does that game's art style and gameplay really benefit from their inclusion? Most people are going to prefer the maximum framerate in that sort of game and it isn't really the type of game where you stop to take in the scenery/appreciate more accurate reflections and shadows. Leads to the "I can turn it on but it tanks my performance so what's the point" scenario. Need to have a good reason to actually turn on features for them to be relevant.
Probably a bit of both.
I don't doubt that they've managed to achieve that, other developers could learn from the likes of them and 4AGames, RT doesn't need to be as intensive as most people think, proper implementations of the technology go a long way to reduce the performance impact, that and just making a technically sound game.
I can understand banning or segmenting mods that have NSFW content but ideological banning will turn into a mess for both sides.
Same way i dont support DRM on mods or excessive DRM on games.