F1 25 Creative Director Believes PC-exclusive Path Tracing Innovation Delivers Unprecedented Realism

[T0@st]

The pit lane is open, the cars are in grid formation, and the red lights are off! F1 25 has officially launched and is now in players' hands. We thought this would be a great moment to connect with F1's Creative Director, Gavin Cooper, for an exclusive Q&A. Gavin has been a creative force in game development for decades. He has worked on racing titles since the late '90s and has built a career out of making the most immersive titles with unrivaled authenticity enjoyed by millions of players and fans around the world.

Meanwhile, Formula 1 has surged in popularity around the globe, adding nearly 90 million new fans in 2024 including a rising profile within American pop culture, making it one of the fastest-growing sports worldwide. And F1 25 is the best place for players and fans to interact and celebrate their fandom. In our Q&A, Gavin shares his thoughts on how he and his team create the world's premier racing game, new technology advancements and how it impacts play, working with the community to make the best game possible, the summer blockbuster F1 movie and the game's unique tie-ins, and building a game that celebrates the sport, the fans, and the culture that surrounds it. Let's get into it.




Thanks for joining us today, Gavin! Now, we're going to talk all about what's new in the franchise, including exciting new tech, gameplay, and more. But there is huge news this year for F1 we need to ask about right away-let's talk about the F1 film and its relationship to the game. We're going to be treated to this huge blockbuster this summer. Are there any tie-ins between the movie and the game as of right now?
Players who preordered the Iconic Edition can take APXGP into either Driver Career or My Team, and enjoy a number of gameplay scenarios that recreate some of the most exciting on-track battles from the film, featuring the drivers Sonny Hayes and Joshua Pearce. The bulk of these will be delivered post-launch to coincide with the release of the movie, but the first of those scenarios—a preview, will be available to all players at launch to give a taste of what's to come. Players who complete all these scenarios will also get Sonny Hayes' helmet as a reward (Joshua Peace's helmet will be awarded to those who preorder the Iconic Edition immediately), allowing them to equip it to their custom driver elsewhere in the game.

How exciting! Now, there's a lot to get into here with this amazing and unique edition of F1. Let's start with the creative vision driving F1 25, and how, in your opinion, does it differentiate from previous entries?
It's a special one, as Formula 1 celebrates its 75th anniversary, and the current season promises to deliver one of the most dramatic seasons in recent history. The sport is rife with compelling stories, and the same is true for F1 25. We wanted to create an F1 game where our players can re-live the narrative of the F1 Championship, experience a whole new story with a new chapter of Braking Point (an epic Formula 1 blockbuster mode set to excite players new and old) while having the opportunity to live out their F1 dreams while competing and connecting with their friends.



Year after year, F1 continues to push the boundaries of racing simulation. What role did new technology play in achieving that, and what technologies specifically are you most excited about?
New technology plays a massive role in how F1 25 continues to raise the bar for realism and immersion in racing simulation. From a gameplay perspective, LIDAR-based circuit updates (sensors which provide highly accurate scans of an area) are a standout. Five tracks, Bahrain, Miami, Melbourne, Suzuka, and Imola, have been updated using LIDAR laser scanning, leading to the most accurate recreations of the tracks to date. You can feel the difference in elevation changes, surface grip, and visual detail, making each lap feel that much more like the real thing.

We have a variety of improvements regarding the game's graphics, cinematics and audio. In terms of visuals, the track surface shader has been updated to reflect the real-life circuits more accurately. Throughout the game, tonemapping improvements create a more dramatic effect across all weather conditions. Off the asphalt, LIDAR has helped make trees and foliage better match their real-life counterparts' type, size and shape, with new additions such as cherry blossom added to Suzuka. On top of the improvements to lighting, shadows, and circuits overall, an emerging PC-exclusive innovation called Path Tracing is being introduced. If you have a PC capable of experiencing it, Path Tracing is the most realistic simulation of light on track we've ever delivered.

What are some of your favourite gameplay advancements in this edition?
We've delivered three reverse tracks: Austria, Silverstone and Zandvoort. The difference when racing the track backwards is much more profound than you'd imagine, and in many ways, you have to throw away what you think you know and treat them like brand-new tracks. The real driver voice-over (VO) system introduced in F1 24 has been massively expanded-we've almost doubled the number of lines from last year and expanded its use in various ways: You now get driver VO in qualifying and race, VO from team principals, and conversations back and forth with your race engineer, with the goal of having it feel more authentic and immersive for players than ever before.



One other thing we've done is give players more control over Driver Icons. You can now allow the AI teams in both career modes to recruit Driver Icons from the market, meaning you can finally go head-to-head with some of those famous faces.

I know Codemasters is very tied in with its player base, learning from one another, and applying changes when necessary. Thinking of that, were there any common pain points you aimed to fix from F1 24?
Listening to the community has always been a huge part of how we build each game. Most of the new and updated features we have implemented in F1 25 have resulted from our close listening to what fans want—overhauling MyTeam, bringing to life the next chapter of Braking Point, and the new Decal Editor are some examples of this.

We also focused on our car handling. We knew there were opportunities for evolution here over F1 24, and we made it a priority to address them based on what players were telling us. We rebuilt the core handling model using direct feedback from sim racers, content creators, and our community who got early hands-on time with the game. That input helped us create a driving experience that's more balanced and stable, with reduced understeer and a rear end that feels a lot more compliant under acceleration.

Let's talk about game modes. Are there any new features or modes in F1 25 that you think will surprise and/or delight even long-time fans?
The big one is the fan-favorite My Team mode, which has received its largest update since its introduction in 2020 and now allows you to become the owner of your F1 team. That alone is chock-full of features, including a shift towards having you manage a pair of drivers-with all the drama that can entail, an all-new facility improvements system, the introduction of upgrade development as its own area of management, new sponsor systems, workforce management…the list goes on and on. And while the new decal editor lets players create the most authentic-looking liveries the game has ever delivered across all game modes, it really shines in My Team as a mode that's all about creating your team identity.

Braking Point is also back, with Konnersport having moved on from its traditional midfield battles and now finding itself competing for the championship. New this year, players can also take Konnersport (and the APXGP team from F1 THE MOVIE, for owners of the Iconic Edition) into both Driver Career and My Team.

I'd like to ask you about the cultural impact of F1. This is the only way people can directly interact with F1, by placing that controller in their hands. Year after year, we see the growing popularity of F1 worldwide, particularly in North America. What does it mean to you to have a hand in expanding the love and culture of racing in general?
We take the responsibility very seriously. We're very aware that the fanbase is growing. The sport is growing at an exponential rate, particularly in the US, and player motivations are broader. Our primary goal is to enable players to feel like a Formula 1 driver when they play our game. We want them to feel like heroes and give them the opportunity to experience the world of Formula 1 across many features. For some players, it's all about competition and being the best, whether that's competing online or through Driver Career and My Team. Then there are players who want to experience more snackable content through narrative-driven features such as Braking Point or bite-sized challenges through F1 World. Our responsibility to our players is to create exciting moments for them, regardless of how they wish to play the game.



Fantastic. Thank you again for your time, Gavin. One final question for you: If players walk away with one lasting impression of F1 25, what do you hope it is?
Regardless of how they've come to appreciate the sport, they fundamentally walk away with a smile and think "that felt like F1." If we achieve that, I'll be very happy.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[TheDeeGee]

It brings realism in NVIDIAs pockets.

 

[RejZoR]

We mostly don't even have basic ray tracing in most games and everyone is already dreaming of path tracing. Sigh. I know ray tracing, particularly path tracing saves a lot of dev time for studio, but we're not there yet. Not even remotely. And with graphic cards that can actually run path traced games at actually usable framerates costing in 2000€ it's just a hobby for the exclusive rich. And they always say it's not worth doing it if it's not for majority of gamers... so, hm, questionmark...

 

[Veseleil]

I know ray tracing, particularly path tracing saves a lot of dev time for studio

And that right there my good man is the main reason it's pushed so hard in the first place. A classic corporate cost cutting sold to the masses as an eye candy, revolutionary tech, a must have/most wanted feature, etc.
Anyone who tried to run ex. Dragon's Dogma 2 fully path traced know how it ends up. But the important thing the RT, PT narrative is successfully pushing sales of the very expensive hardware, in order to make a very lazy software development efforts (games) even barely playable.

 

[RejZoR]

And that right there my good man is the main reason it's pushed so hard in the first place. A classic corporate cost cutting sold to the masses as an eye candy, revolutionary tech, a must have/most wanted feature, etc.
Anyone who tried to run ex. Dragon's Dogma 2 fully path traced know how it ends up. But the important thing the RT, PT narrative is successfully pushing sales of the very expensive hardware, in order to make a very lazy software development efforts (games) even barely playable.

I mean, if that means they can focus more at creating amazing levels, better story, more of everything, sure, but I think it'll just be more of the same, but cheaper for them.

 

[Hakker]

All I hear is more Micro transaction options.

 

[chrcoluk]

What is the point of that video? it shows no game footage, just a short song with 1-2 second montages.

 

[Tomorrow]

I know ray tracing, particularly path tracing saves a lot of dev time for studio

But does it? Really?

Think about it. Unless a game entirely foregoes hand placed spot lighting etc i have a hard time believing it saves the studio any time.
Today's games are still 99% hybrids of raster and RT. In order to actually reduce the workload the game would have to have mandatory RT in at least some of it's effects to skip the part of doing it in raster. Kind if like Indiana Jones did i believe.

Most games dont do that. F1 2025 itself has a full raster mode in addition to raster-RT hybrid and what i presume is full PT mode.
So at the very minimum the developers still had to make one extra rendering mode for PT. That to me seems like extra work.
The only way that's even profitable is when Nvidia bankrolled them the way they are known to do.

On their own, with their own funds i doubt most developers would bother making PT for a very small subset on PC users who could actually run it with acceptable compromises in terms of resolution and latency (PT requires upscaling and FG to be enabled as no one is running modern PT games natively).

 

[nis]

Too bad you spend more time navigating stupid menus and superflous content than you do playing the game. Also turn ray tracing off for performance. And if you play from multiple IPs they'll block you for 24 hours as EA equate a new IP with a new install. Not worth your money.

 

[theglaze]

"Unprecedented Realism" and "F1 25" should not be used in the same sentence.

Entertaining though!

 

[chrcoluk]

Am I supposed to be impressed, no wonder they showed no footage, the lighting looks really bad.

 

[BSim500]

And that right there my good man is the main reason it's pushed so hard in the first place. A classic corporate cost cutting sold to the masses as an eye candy, revolutionary tech, a must have/most wanted feature, etc.
Anyone who tried to run ex. Dragon's Dogma 2 fully path traced know how it ends up. But the important thing the RT, PT narrative is successfully pushing sales of the very expensive hardware, in order to make a very lazy software development efforts (games) even barely playable.

Exactly. There can't be many gamers left by now who haven't figured out "We can save even more time" = lowering the "Now we can put less effort than ever into optimisation whilst management pockets the money" bar even more into the gutter without actually making the games 'better'...

 

[Prima.Vera]

Too bad you spend more time navigating stupid menus and superflous content than you do playing the game. Also turn ray tracing off for performance. And if you play from multiple IPs they'll block you for 24 hours as EA equate a new IP with a new install. Not worth your money.

This. In order to go for a quick race you have to navigate a lot of menus, go online, check million other things and then finally you can race...
Why don't they use Microprose's Grand Prix 4 menu style. Simple, easy to navigate, everything was conveniently placed, etc, And yes, they also had mouse support.

 

[HeadRusch1]

DF: If you play on a 5090, you can almost lock 4k Path traced at 30fps with DLSS on. If you turn off Ray and Path Tracing, you can lock it at 60.....with a little overhead.
Meanwhile, for the rest of us.....

 

[RejZoR]

But does it? Really?

Think about it. Unless a game entirely foregoes hand placed spot lighting etc i have a hard time believing it saves the studio any time.
Today's games are still 99% hybrids of raster and RT. In order to actually reduce the workload the game would have to have mandatory RT in at least some of it's effects to skip the part of doing it in raster. Kind if like Indiana Jones did i believe.

Most games dont do that. F1 2025 itself has a full raster mode in addition to raster-RT hybrid and what i presume is full PT mode.
So at the very minimum the developers still had to make one extra rendering mode for PT. That to me seems like extra work.
The only way that's even profitable is when Nvidia bankrolled them the way they are known to do.

On their own, with their own funds i doubt most developers would bother making PT for a very small subset on PC users who could actually run it with acceptable compromises in terms of resolution and latency (PT requires upscaling and FG to be enabled as no one is running modern PT games natively).

You're missing a bigger picture here. The lights developer places in the scene with ray tracing is what you as player sees in the end. That also includes shadows.

Before this, developers either had a VERY rough real-time approximation that could look significantly different look when actually rendered or they spent hours calculating lights and shadow maps and baking that into scene as static lighting. If it wasn't right, they had to change it and re-render the whole scene, wasting hours. Also the way light didn't reflect, scatter or bounce. Scenes or levels would often be way too dark if they didn't place enough fake lights around. With real physical lights, that one light in the corridor, it will reflect of white walls making whole scene brighter in realistic way from that single light source. It requires a lot less time and work to create a realistic looking level with correct lighting and shadows.

Raster games with ray tracing generally require more effort because like I explained, levels designed with raster in mind will look horrible when you convert them into ray traced unless you spend extra time and effort on them to place correct lights which is in a different way than with raster.

Ray tracing is just natural evolution of rendering. To claim it's entirely NVIDIA's thing is kinda daft claim if you know how games have evolved through years. In beginning everything was uniformly lit regardless of lights, objects or whatever. Then we started faking more and more things to look closer to reality. And we became really good at it. Ray tracing is just a natural step forward. Why spend time faking it all when we can just do it realistically through ray tracing.

 

[Tomorrow]

You're missing a bigger picture here. The lights developer places in the scene with ray tracing is what you as player sees in the end. That also includes shadows.

Before this, developers either had a VERY rough real-time approximation that could look significantly different look when actually rendered or they spent hours calculating lights and shadow maps and baking that into scene as static lighting. If it wasn't right, they had to change it and re-render the whole scene, wasting hours. Also the way light didn't reflect, scatter or bounce. Scenes or levels would often be way too dark if they didn't place enough fake lights around. With real physical lights, that one light in the corridor, it will reflect of white walls making whole scene brighter in realistic way from that single light source. It requires a lot less time and work to create a realistic looking level with correct lighting and shadows.

Raster games with ray tracing generally require more effort because like I explained, levels designed with raster in mind will look horrible when you convert them into ray traced unless you spend extra time and effort on them to place correct lights which is in a different way than with raster.

Ray tracing is just natural evolution of rendering. To claim it's entirely NVIDIA's thing is kinda daft claim if you know how games have evolved through years. In beginning everything was uniformly lit regardless of lights, objects or whatever. Then we started faking more and more things to look closer to reality. And we became really good at it. Ray tracing is just a natural step forward. Why spend time faking it all when we can just do it realistically through ray tracing.

Yeah i get that that they're using RT as reference where to put the lights, but they still have to manually do it for raster. I suppose it saves some time and guesswork where to put them instead doing a best guess.

Also WYSIWYG has existed for a long time. I remember messing around in CryEngine for fun. Just placing some things into a preexisting map and then jumping into the game from there to see it in real time. So i think the sentence that previously they had to spends hours to see the result is not quite right.

When it comes to Nvidia, what i said was noting to do with origin of RT as a technology. I was saying that it's in Nvidia's interest for developers to include RT/PT and thus it's logical for Nvidia to help them financially to achieve that. On their own without external help i doubt very many developers would bother.
They might use RT for internal development, but not in the finished game itself. I think i remember cases where users discovered RT on games that shipped without it and it was there for development purposes.

Im not denying that RT helps their development. What im arguing against is that it's somehow a massive time saver. It would be if the game had mandatory RT and the lights etc were done with only RT. Foregoing the whole process of raster. Also as far as i know materials also require tweaking to look good with RT so that's an extra step that requires time.

 

[RejZoR]

Which is why you have games like new Indiana Jones and Doom The Dark Ages doing away entirely with raster. They simply don't bother with time consuming raster and hand placing lights to make things look realistic. It just IS realistic wherever they place the lights.

 

[Tomorrow]

Which is why you have games like new Indiana Jones and Doom The Dark Ages doing away entirely with raster. They simply don't bother with time consuming raster and hand placing lights to make things look realistic. It just IS realistic wherever they place the lights.

Yep and this really is a a time saver worthy of mentioning. I just dont approve of every game that includes RT and PT being called as massive time saver for a studio when they still have to do raster too.

In terms of effects, lighting benefits the most in my opinion including global illumination. Then there's reflections tho for performance reasons screen space raster reflections can also look good. One area where i feel like RT is wasted is shadows. Raster has had good soft shadows for ages and making them RT produces generally very little visual benefit for the player.

 

[RejZoR]

Yep and this really is a a time saver worthy of mentioning. I just dont approve of every game that includes RT and PT being called as massive time saver for a studio when they still have to do raster too.

In terms of effects, lighting benefits the most in my opinion including global illumination. Then there's reflections tho for performance reasons screen space raster reflections can also look good. One area where i feel like RT is wasted is shadows. Raster has had good soft shadows for ages and making them RT produces generally very little visual benefit for the player.

I disagree. We were impressed by raster shadows in Splinter Cell or Doom 3 because they were really ground breaking for the time and looked incredibly realistic, but they often still looked and felt like perspective was incorrect, especially across irregular surfaces like stairs and similar. I've not seen any of those issues with any ray traced game so far. Shadows were actually "anatomically" correct even over difficult surfaces.

 

[Tomorrow]

I disagree. We were impressed by raster shadows in Splinter Cell or Doom 3 because they were really ground breaking for the time and looked incredibly realistic, but they often still looked and felt like perspective was incorrect, especially across irregular surfaces like stairs and similar. I've not seen any of those issues with any ray traced game so far. Shadows were actually "anatomically" correct even over difficult surfaces.

Original Crysis had soft shadows that look good even today. The first RT game Shadow of the Tomb Raider had very underwhelming RT shadows.
As long as lighting is done in RT then shadows need not be. I've never seen anyone say that a game has awesome RT shadows. I've seen plenty of that for games with lighting and reflections because these are genuinely hard to do properly in raster. Shadows? Not so much.

There's also the question of performance. Not everything needs to be pixel perfect accurate RT based effects.

 

[RejZoR]

Original Crysis had soft shadows that look good even today. The first RT game Shadow of the Tomb Raider had very underwhelming RT shadows.
As long as lighting is done in RT then shadows need not be. I've never seen anyone say that a game has awesome RT shadows. I've seen plenty of that for games with lighting and reflections because these are genuinely hard to do properly in raster. Shadows? Not so much.

There's also the question of performance. Not everything needs to be pixel perfect accurate RT based effects.

It usually isn't. Most shadows are calculated at half rate because it's cheaper and ultimately actually makes shadows more realistic because they aren't ultra sharp. In real life, unless something is just few centimeters away from light source, it'll have a soft shadow and not a razor sharp edged shadows. Which I greatly disliked with most games that did realistic shadows in the past. They were too damn sharp and looked artificial because of it.

 

[chrcoluk]

You're missing a bigger picture here. The lights developer places in the scene with ray tracing is what you as player sees in the end. That also includes shadows.

Before this, developers either had a VERY rough real-time approximation that could look significantly different look when actually rendered or they spent hours calculating lights and shadow maps and baking that into scene as static lighting. If it wasn't right, they had to change it and re-render the whole scene, wasting hours. Also the way light didn't reflect, scatter or bounce. Scenes or levels would often be way too dark if they didn't place enough fake lights around. With real physical lights, that one light in the corridor, it will reflect of white walls making whole scene brighter in realistic way from that single light source. It requires a lot less time and work to create a realistic looking level with correct lighting and shadows.

Raster games with ray tracing generally require more effort because like I explained, levels designed with raster in mind will look horrible when you convert them into ray traced unless you spend extra time and effort on them to place correct lights which is in a different way than with raster.

Ray tracing is just natural evolution of rendering. To claim it's entirely NVIDIA's thing is kinda daft claim if you know how games have evolved through years. In beginning everything was uniformly lit regardless of lights, objects or whatever. Then we started faking more and more things to look closer to reality. And we became really good at it. Ray tracing is just a natural step forward. Why spend time faking it all when we can just do it realistically through ray tracing.

Something I am observing with real time lighting is it often looks too light across the entire scene, as a gamer, I think there is no benefit to myself, the benefit all seems to be to Nvidia who profit from the GPUs and developers who save time on development.

It usually isn't. Most shadows are calculated at half rate because it's cheaper and ultimately actually makes shadows more realistic because they aren't ultra sharp. In real life, unless something is just few centimeters away from light source, it'll have a soft shadow and not a razor sharp edged shadows. Which I greatly disliked with most games that did realistic shadows in the past. They were too damn sharp and looked artificial because of it.

Ironically I hate soft shadows. Next time I am outside in sunny weather I will try and take notice of how sharp shadows actually look in real life.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Which is why you have games like new Indiana Jones and Doom The Dark Ages doing away entirely with raster. They simply don't bother with time consuming raster and hand placing lights to make things look realistic. It just IS realistic wherever they place the lights.

The Path Trace is Indiana Jones is almost perfect and completelly different from raster, if you look at the comparison screenshots. The lighting, illumination and shadowing totally different from raster. I actually wasted minutes doing comparison shots, and was amazed of the difference. The raster felt like playing a game, while the Path Trace felt like that's actually realistic environment.

 

[RejZoR]

The Path Trace is Indiana Jones is almost perfect and completelly different from raster, if you look at the comparison screenshots. The lighting, illumination and shadowing totally different from raster. I actually wasted minutes doing comparison shots, and was amazed of the difference. The raster felt like playing a game, while the Path Trace felt like that's actually realistic environment.

And that's the point of ray tracing or path tracing. You can make very convincing scenes using raster, but you need a ton of time to achieve it. Where with RT it'll just be that way naturally.