The PS5's Ray Tracing Capabilities Could Get An Upgrade Soon--Report

The PS5's ray tracing performance, while impressive for a gaming console, is still quite lacking. But that may soon change.

According to TechRadar, a certain recent post on the Sony Group website made mention of a new AI technology, which, if implemented, could increase the ray tracing performance of the PlayStation 5. Lead researcher Takafumi Morifuji was mentioned as among the people working on making that happen.

Morifuji's work reportedly focuses on using super-resolution technology to help improve ray tracing. In simpler terms, he studies how machine learning could make lower-resolution images way sharper than they are.

He believes that incorporating super-resolution tech in ray tracing (something that NVIDIA and AMD already do with their DLSS and FidelityFX software) could have a "large effect in the future," perhaps mainly due to improving the PS5's frame rates and overall smoothness when using RT modes.

You can check out the post in its entirety on the Sony Group website, if you're curious. But that's not even the first indication that Sony is looking to beef up the PS5's RT performance overall.

Second RT-Improving Patent?

Another patent, this time from lead PS4 and PS5 engineer Mark Cerny, points to a similar performance-boosting tech involving the current-gen console's ray-tracing capabilities. VideoGamesChronicle reports that the patent credited to Cerny states its purpose as follows: "system and method for accelerated ray tracing with asynchronous operation in ray transformation."

In English, this means that the technology Cerny could be working on improves frame rates in RT mode by shortening the light rays being rendered onto the scene. For the unaware, ray tracing, in general, recreates extremely realistic lighting and shadows by simulating a real light source and tracking every bit of light ray it gives off, which bounces off everything inside the game world as it does in real life.

Ray tracing used to be a graphics rendering technique only used in the movie industry because it required way more hardware power to run. But recent advancements in technology have allowed it to be run with far fewer resources, as it does with NVIDIA's RTX and AMD's RX 5000/6000 series graphics cards.

How Does The PS5's Ray Tracing Performance Fare Right Now?

Ray tracing on the PS5 is a pretty limited feature for now, especially since the console is still so early in its lifespan. Due to just how demanding it is on hardware, only 24 games support RT on the current-gen Sony console (via AndroidCentral). And even if they do support it, their developers had to find compromises to make things run as smoothly as possible.

Most of these games, like "Control: Ultimate Edition" and "Deathloop," are forced to run at a not-so-smooth 30 FPS when ray tracing is turned on. However, a few games like "Spider-Man: Miles Morales" do run at a far smoother 60 FPS with RT on, but only on Dynamic 4K resolution and not at native 4K-once again, compromises.