Codemasters announced today that F1 25 will join the extremely elite club of games supporting path tracing. Just like with all the others (Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Portal with RTX), the feature is a PC exclusive.
On the subject, the developer said:
Expanding on Ray Tracing technology and available as a new “Ultra Max” option in the graphics settings, light now follows every bounced path, including that from indirect lighting and multiple reflections. Shade, light, and colours dynamically shift as they would in real-life, whether you’re racing under the thousands of lights in Bahrain or navigating the castle section on Baku at sunset.
If you have a PC capable of experiencing it, Path Tracing is the most realistic simulation of light on track that we’ve ever delivered.
These aren’t the only visual and technical improvements that fans will find in F1 25. Tonemapping and light balance improvements promise a more dramatic effect in all types of weather, with better representation of changes in cloud cover. There are also some enhancements to the track surface shader, which now displays more pronounced tyre and lock-up marks as well as physical changes based on other collected real-world data.
The addition of light detection and ranging scanning (LIDAR) makes tracks far more accurate overall. LIDAR also helped trees and foliage better match the species, placement, size, and shape of their real-life counterparts, with new additions such as cherry blossom trees in Suzuka.
Codemasters also introduced NVIDIA Audio2Face. This technology (already seen in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl) improved the facial animations that players will see during modes such as Career and Braking Point. The reintroduced press interviews now capture drivers delivering their responses in a more authentic fashion, with this technology extending to facility heads in My Team. Lastly, PS5 Pro console users will enjoy split-screen racing at 60 frames per second in this year’s edition of the official F1 racing game.
Codemasters hasn’t shared the system requirements for path tracing usage on PC, but we’ll let you know once it does. F1 25 will be available on May 30 across PC and consoles.
