Spider-Man 2's Ray Tracing Feature Always On

[T0@st]

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.



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[Double-Click]

They better put a toggle on that for PC down the road or that's a paddlin'.

 

[sephiroth117]

They better put a toggle on that for PC down the road or that's a paddlin'.

if it's running on an RDNA 2 console with a midrange GPU, I wouldn't be too preoccupied, especially given that Spiderman 1 and Ratchet and Clank were far from horrendous from an optimization point of view

 

[Vya Domus]

You know it is kind of impressive they can even get ray tracing running at somewhat decent framerates and resolution on what's essentially an RX 6700.

 

[notaburner]

You know it is kind of impressive they can even get ray tracing running at somewhat decent framerates and resolution on what's essentially an RX 6700.

There's probably more of an effort to only enable effects in places that will provide the most noticeable visual improvement. When you're running that caliber of hardware, you don't have the option to waste performance by turning on all the bells and whistles. Just going with RT reflections in specific places due to all the glass on buildings you would see in a Spiderman game probably provides a nice visual bang for the buck. You're constantly seeing surfaces that have clear reflections so the visual benefit is beneficial.

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.

 

[Avro Arrow]

At times like this, I'm so thankful to not be a console gamer. If they try to force this crap on PC gamers, it's guaranteed that someone will make a mod to turn it off.

 

[phanbuey]

You know it is kind of impressive they can even get ray tracing running at somewhat decent framerates and resolution on what's essentially an RX 6700.

Agreed - consoles have insane optimization. Either that or PC's are so bloated that we're essentially sitting with a 30% overhead all the time.

Probably a bit of both.

 

[Denver]

if it's running on an RDNA 2 console with a midrange GPU, I wouldn't be too preoccupied, especially given that Spiderman 1 and Ratchet and Clank were far from horrendous from an optimization point of view

Yeah, Sony's ports are the most balanced of this generation, no one can deny that.

 

[wolf]

Can't wait to check it out, I really liked Remastered and Miles Morales. Super cool they expanded RT reflections and it's always on, should be a blast on PC for most RT capable hardware.

 

[Makaveli]

Looking forward to it but will be quite the wait for a PC launch.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Looking forward to it but will be quite the wait for a PC launch.

I heard a rumor of 2025. The wait is allegedly much shorter this time around.

 

[theouto]

Insomniac has some insane engineers over there, their RT implementation for spiderman on pc is some of the best looking and best running, no problem running it at half-res at native 1440p at 70-80fps on my amd gpu (Everything else maxed, rt shadows and reflections on miles morales).

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.

 

[Tomorrow]

At times like this, I'm so thankful to not be a console gamer. If they try to force this crap on PC gamers, it's guaranteed that someone will make a mod to turn it off.

Or rainbow flag removal mod that only PC version players can mod out...

 

[theouto]

Or rainbow flag removal mod that only PC version players can mod out...

???????????? Why would one care enough to mod that out of the game? Genuinely confused

 

[Tomorrow]

???????????? Why would one care enough to mod that out of the game? Genuinely confused

Apparently plenty of people. Personally i dont care much but i do care when mod hosting sites start banning such mods.
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.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Or rainbow flag removal mod that only PC version players can mod out...

I sure am glad that I'm not pathetic enough to care about stuff like that. I'm not insinuating that you are (I saw your post saying otherwise), I just can't imagine being such a miserable human being that I could be triggered by something as harmless as a rainbow flag.