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The new PS5 Pro update for F1 24 adds a suite of new options for fans of Codemasters’ racing game on PlayStation. For those who have already picked up one of Sony’s pricey new console, the new racing game adds brilliant PSSR support, an 8K mode, and a host of ray-tracing features on-track.
In an interview with VideoGamer, F1 technical producer Si Lumb explained that players who use the new suite of ray-tracing features won’t want to “go back” to playing the game without them, especially since they run at a full 60fps.
F1 24 ray-tracing is a game changer
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the New VideoGamer Podcast, Lumb revealed that the studio is “definitely not done” with improving visuals in its racing game series. While F1 24 may have hit its peak with this latest update, new engine improvements are in the pipeline to make future games look even better.
With the new PS5 Pro update, the biggest improvement for console players is the addition of a host of new ray-tracing effects, all of which were previously present on PC. However, with the suite now optimised for a console at 60fps, there’s few reasons to turn those effects off, and Lumb is confident players won’t want to.
“Adding ray-tracing, the reflections, you know, we’ve just been running through Vegas with the new content, reflections bouncing off, and it just feels fantastic,” they said. “And we wanna make sure we give players that thrilling, on-track experience. We’re looking at how we can increase the resolution of ray-traced effects, the fidelity of every aspect of our art.”
To match the new lighting and reflections, a host of assets had to be upgraded in F1 24 across the board to look right. Codemasters admits that these changes “might feel like small things” to the average player, but they end up increasing the game’s realism, especially for fans of real F1.
“The magic of it is that you layer more and more realism into the scene, more and more reflections. You start to give the eye what it expects, so when you look at it and it looks like what you expect When we first turned it on, and the developers came very excitedly, turn it on and suddenly the scene goes from a great-looking racing game to a really great looking racing game, and you go back and you don’t wanna go back.”
Lumb explained that “every step forward in video game graphics” makes the previous generation look “more like a video game”, but we’re not in a generation where that difference is now evident across both platforms. While the Xbox Series X and PS5 versions of the game still look phenomenal, the PlayStation 5 Pro’s suite of ray-tracing features that aren’t possible on its predecessors offer a much different, more tangible, experience.
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