It's official. 4A Games are fully committed to ray tracing technology for its next big game and the implications are exciting. The firm is in preparing for the next generation with initial work concentrated around RT - strongly suggesting that ray tracing support isn't an afterthought built into next-gen console silicon, but a key feature of the design.
In an interview centred on 4A Games' excellent work in bringing Metro Redux to Switch, we asked CTO Oles Shishkovstov for his reaction to publicly revealed aspects of next generation console hardware. "We are fully into ray tracing, dropping old-school codepath/techniques completely," he told us.
The firm is keeping its cards close to its chest but 4A has already shipped Metro Exodus on PC with DXR ray tracing support and is currently assessing options for its next step. "Internally we experimented a lot and with spectacular results so far. You will need to wait to see what we implement into our future projects," Shishkovstov told us.