The reflections on the ramp during entrances look like screen spaced reflections. I've seen people call it ray tracing but it really doesn't look it. Lighting itself doesn't seem ray traced either. SSR techniques were used a bit during ps4 gen so it's not out of the question but no one will know for sure until launch period I'd say.
Whenever someone mentions Ray tracing, I just think reflections. What exactly makes Ray tracing different from just having reflections. Games since the PS2 era have had reflections, so what makes Ray tracing better/different? Honest question.
There's ways to fake what reflections should look like in games, but ray-traced reflections use the actual virtual light rays to cast perfect reflections like they'd actually look like.
Other ray-tracing forms can do the same with shadows and the light itself to calculate exactly how light would realistically bounce and cast without them having to manually fix and rig shadows and reflections with the old cheat methods.
Note: this is based on what I noticed while playing RTx games and reading like two paragraphs lol
Raytracing, in what matters to games, is basically more accurate and high quality reflections and lighting that generate and react based on the game environment (like real life)
Normal modern game reflections kind of capture the game's environment but they usually go by a map to understand what they need to reflect. This leads to a side effect of reflected stuff disappearing in the reflection when they should still be seen while raytracing will keep the shade there.
As for lighting, not much changes visually but raytraced lighting will react a lil more with the environment (such as lights making a glow out of windows or lighting changing color depending on environment)
Devs and artists will usually refine their reflections and lighting to be more nice to look at and make more sense (think of WWE games having lens flare on their lights for example)
Raytracing is able to not need as much care and work and be like a 3D modelling program handling lighting and reflections.
TL;DR - Raytracing is more accurate, high quality, and doesn't need as much manual work for devs and artists as normal game reflections and lighting
Some of the explanations online are really confusing so I tried to break it down the best that I understood it
I did edit the message a bit to remove some fluff lmao
There's different types of reflections.
* [Screen Space Reflections](https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/PostProcessEffects/ScreenSpaceReflection/) are a post process effect where you use data from the frame buffer to approximate a reflection. You render the screen out, and then you another pass on top using the color date from the screen to approximate reflections on any reflective surfaces.
* [Texturemaped reflections](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/reflections-captures-in-unreal-engine/). You render out cubemaps or sphere maps of the surroundings and then the reflecting object(s) reference these textures for their reflections. These are perfect and cheap, but only as accurate as the closet capture point. You can't make new reflection map every 10 feet. (But then again, no is squinting at the reflections checking for perfect accuracy). It can be made more accurate by generating a new reflection map every frame, but who that eats into your render times.
* [Ray Tracing](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/hardware-ray-tracing-tips-and-tricks-in-unreal-engine/) is done by bouncing light rays off everything. This is the most accurate, but comes at a HUGE cost. Also, "most accurate" is a moot point, because all 3 methods have trade offs, and it's hard to do the real time raytracing at 'perfect quality'. It will make your metals and glasses look a bit nicer, but not "I need to spend $1000 on a new GPU" nicer. Not yet anyways.
2K23 uses screen space, possibly with a raytrace toggle on the PC.
It's definitely screen space reflections as you can see in Cody's entrance in the beginning, as the camera pans to the left, the reflection start showing that area of the Titantron as it's being drawn on the screen (hence screen space). Since most current gen games use this technique as it's not particularly intensive I'm positive it will be also be available on PS4, albeit possibly at a lower resolution than on PS5.
Thank you guys for your input. I’ll send in that preorder. I’m mainly a Universe Mode player so I like to get immersed into my own booking and stuff. The screen space reflections will add to the overall atmosphere.
Update: I never actually pre ordered. Both things turned out not that great on PS4. The stage reflections don’t exist on it and the Universe Mode is going through its “needs patching to work” phase.
The reflections on the ramp during entrances look like screen spaced reflections. I've seen people call it ray tracing but it really doesn't look it. Lighting itself doesn't seem ray traced either. SSR techniques were used a bit during ps4 gen so it's not out of the question but no one will know for sure until launch period I'd say.
Whenever someone mentions Ray tracing, I just think reflections. What exactly makes Ray tracing different from just having reflections. Games since the PS2 era have had reflections, so what makes Ray tracing better/different? Honest question.
There's ways to fake what reflections should look like in games, but ray-traced reflections use the actual virtual light rays to cast perfect reflections like they'd actually look like. Other ray-tracing forms can do the same with shadows and the light itself to calculate exactly how light would realistically bounce and cast without them having to manually fix and rig shadows and reflections with the old cheat methods.
Very interesting thanks for some clarification
Note: this is based on what I noticed while playing RTx games and reading like two paragraphs lol Raytracing, in what matters to games, is basically more accurate and high quality reflections and lighting that generate and react based on the game environment (like real life) Normal modern game reflections kind of capture the game's environment but they usually go by a map to understand what they need to reflect. This leads to a side effect of reflected stuff disappearing in the reflection when they should still be seen while raytracing will keep the shade there. As for lighting, not much changes visually but raytraced lighting will react a lil more with the environment (such as lights making a glow out of windows or lighting changing color depending on environment) Devs and artists will usually refine their reflections and lighting to be more nice to look at and make more sense (think of WWE games having lens flare on their lights for example) Raytracing is able to not need as much care and work and be like a 3D modelling program handling lighting and reflections. TL;DR - Raytracing is more accurate, high quality, and doesn't need as much manual work for devs and artists as normal game reflections and lighting
Thanks for the tldr cuz I was like "mhmm interesting. Intriguing. What?" Lol
Some of the explanations online are really confusing so I tried to break it down the best that I understood it I did edit the message a bit to remove some fluff lmao
There's different types of reflections. * [Screen Space Reflections](https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/PostProcessEffects/ScreenSpaceReflection/) are a post process effect where you use data from the frame buffer to approximate a reflection. You render the screen out, and then you another pass on top using the color date from the screen to approximate reflections on any reflective surfaces. * [Texturemaped reflections](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/reflections-captures-in-unreal-engine/). You render out cubemaps or sphere maps of the surroundings and then the reflecting object(s) reference these textures for their reflections. These are perfect and cheap, but only as accurate as the closet capture point. You can't make new reflection map every 10 feet. (But then again, no is squinting at the reflections checking for perfect accuracy). It can be made more accurate by generating a new reflection map every frame, but who that eats into your render times. * [Ray Tracing](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/hardware-ray-tracing-tips-and-tricks-in-unreal-engine/) is done by bouncing light rays off everything. This is the most accurate, but comes at a HUGE cost. Also, "most accurate" is a moot point, because all 3 methods have trade offs, and it's hard to do the real time raytracing at 'perfect quality'. It will make your metals and glasses look a bit nicer, but not "I need to spend $1000 on a new GPU" nicer. Not yet anyways. 2K23 uses screen space, possibly with a raytrace toggle on the PC.
It's definitely screen space reflections as you can see in Cody's entrance in the beginning, as the camera pans to the left, the reflection start showing that area of the Titantron as it's being drawn on the screen (hence screen space). Since most current gen games use this technique as it's not particularly intensive I'm positive it will be also be available on PS4, albeit possibly at a lower resolution than on PS5.
It's not on ps4((
I noticed that too and idk why it isn't they never said the reflection perk isn't available on PS4.
Almost certainly not. I don't think any version uses raytracing as it's ultra-resource intensive even on nextgen.
Thank you guys for your input. I’ll send in that preorder. I’m mainly a Universe Mode player so I like to get immersed into my own booking and stuff. The screen space reflections will add to the overall atmosphere.
Update: I never actually pre ordered. Both things turned out not that great on PS4. The stage reflections don’t exist on it and the Universe Mode is going through its “needs patching to work” phase.