PS6 - ray tracing and path tracing should be the priority

Which graphical aspect needs most improvement to achieve photorealism?

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RetroGamingUK

RetroGamingUK

Member
I've owned every generation of PlayStation and, apart from the obvious reason of playing the latest games, it's always been about that graphical leap.

This gen was mainly about a leap to UHD (any resolution above 1080p), but I feel that this has lead to skyrocketing dev costs as asset detail has had to increase.

Looking forward, it's hard to imagine games becoming more detailed than something like the recent Death Stranding 2, it's simply diminishing returns for me.

The thing I'm most excited about is…

Ray tracing and path tracing

I've seen some videos of Cyberpunk and Formula 1 running on high end PCs and for me this is the big leap we need for next gen to impress people.

The great thing here is that it doesn't add that much to dev costs, the engine and the GPU take care of everything.

Another great aspect is that it would finally eliminate the devs wasting time on baked lighting.

As someone who owns a 55" OLED and can't increase screen size any further, I'm quite done with resolution bumps and 120fps seems pointless to me.

How about you guys?



 
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HRK69 said:
Ray tracing is cool and all, but give me locked 60+fps and fast load times any day. Pretty lights dont fix sluggish gameplay
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I don't think we're going back to 30fps being the standard now

A big reason why graphics haven't improved a great deal this gen was the push for 60fps standard

Now this has largely been achieved I think we need to move on from performance

I'd be happy with…

-1900p
-60fps
-path tracing

…on next gen.

If it's too expensive then wait a few years before launching the PS6.
 
Locked 60 and back to physics-based gameplay as in the PS360 era.
I'm fine with visuals right now, however, I have been missing the lack of focus implemented in physics and the resulting chaos in gameplay for quite some time.
 
Most important things in my eyes is Neural Texture Decompression + MALL Cache (L3/Infinity Cache) + a major shift to a dynamic approach with common use of both RTGI & Virtualised Geometry + significant uptick in ML TOPS.

This 'll open up a whole other level of efficiency on data throughput and size. They might only need 24GB G7 @ 896GB/s but with 64MB MALL Cache on-die; with a well-optimised gaming workload and on top of that, RT/ML-heavy workloads getting lots of cache hits, it'd be more like 1.5TB/s but with reduced latency (also good for RT/ML) and it could even shave 5-10w of the top of the power draw (sounds small, but that few percent off the top end is a big deal).

Add in Neural Texture Decompression done right on the GPU with Matrix Cores and/or extended compute, a new Kraken-based Storage Controller with another 20% efficiency for other assets and no more pulling baked data or multiple LODs in and out of memory; and it just opens up so much more room and bandwidth so we can have more, higher quality assets, run far more complex calculations and even have good anisotropic filtering without bandwidth limiting us.

In addition, I think we could reasonably see 4x the total effective ML performance of the PS5 Pro on the PS6, so with further refined solutions, concurrently having a Transformer-based ML AA/Upscaling solution (PSSR3?), Frame-Gen, Neural Texture Decompression & Ray Regeneration would drastically increase render efficiency.

~27.2TF UDNA GPU (Compute ML + Matrix Cores = >1200 Dense TOPS) w/ Neural Texture Decomp <> 64MB L3 MALL Cache @ 1.5-2TB/s, ~10ns Latency & 0.3nJ/bit (~20-60% Cache Hits) <> 24GB GDDR7 @ 896-1024GB/s, ~60ns Latency & 5.0nJ/bit <> Custom Storage Controller (linearly-scaled vs PS5 + ~20% Decompression Efficiency) <> PCIe 5.0 x4 4Ch 2TB SSD @ ~10GB/s RAW

The base PS4 was the last console with good bandwidth relative to its power. Moving data from A to B to C etc. is a very expensive part of computing and I think the key going into this gen is closing that bandwidth : compute ratio back down so that everything can be kept fed and then some.
 
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Just give me more physics, particles, deformation etc.

Example:

hd5gyi.gif
 
PS6 gonna have amd tech, cpu wise im sure it will be solid, at the least zen5 archi 8c16t, but problem is gpu, amd gpu's are well behind in both ai upscaling and especially rt, proof of that is- there is to this day, so mid 2025 not a single amd gpu that can run maxed cp2077 with pathtracing in 1080p60.
 
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Physics and interactivity, thank you.

We've got path tracing, global illumination, and terrific textures - and baring a few games, the worlds are basically static shoeboxes built for mindless fetch quests and walk and talk. I'd like some actual interaction, some real gameplay. Games like Deus Ex have more environmental interactions than USD$300m Sony games twenty five years removed. It's insane.
 
Audiophile said:
~27.2TF UDNA GPU (Compute ML + Matrix Cores = >1200 Dense TOPS) w/ Neural Texture Decomp <> 64MB L3 MALL Cache @ 1.5-2TB/s, ~10ns Latency & 0.3nJ/bit (~20-60% Cache Hits) <> 24GB GDDR7 @ 896-1024GB/s, ~60ns Latency & 5.0nJ/bit <> Custom Storage Controller (linearly-scaled vs PS5 + ~20% Decompression Efficiency) <> PCIe 5.0 x4 4Ch 2TB SSD @ ~10GB/s RAW
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PS5 Pro is getting a big upgrade in 2026 — I asked Mark Cerny what's coming, and why AMD's future PC GPUs feel more 'PlayStation' than ever
"Big chunks of RDNA 5, or whatever AMD ends up calling it, are coming out of engineering I am doing on the project."
-Sony's Mark Cerny

All good points but I still believe it'll be RDNA5, though not even Mark Cerny knows.
 
PS6 should be fine with even PT, the patents from AMD as well as the requirements for DXR 1.2 that will include standardized support for OMM and SER indicate the RT performance lift over RDNA4 will be significant. Matching or even exceeding Ada/Blackwell seems a given.
 
How about instead of these bells and whistles they make a decent console that has games on it? Idk man I feel like that would work better for me than Pathtracing or whatever
 
It is time to stop giving ray-tracing that much of a spotlight when there are more pressing matters as stable performance, high native resolutions, and real-time rendering and physics beyond lighting. Games also need to evolve in interactivity as graphics are hitting diminishing returns while asking too much from hardware.
 
Personal opinion:

In order for ray tracing to really feel like a visual upgrade over traditional rendering, it's got to be full on, which inevitably tanks performance really hard. When I was playing Cyberpunk last year, I ran it with all the RT turned off and a few settings tuned down from max to get a fairly steady 70-90fps. With those same settings, when I set the RT to the psycho setting, my frame rate dropped down into the low 20s.

Having a solid frame rate is so much more important to me than extra visual details. Once I switched to PC back in 2012 and got used to playing every game at 60, I don't ever want to play games below that. I have put up with a crap frame rate in some isolated cases because the game was so good, but frame rate to me will always be more important. If developers can design for minimum frame rates at 60 or above, and have enough remaining resources to add RT effects on top and maintain 60, great. But if they're sacrificing 60fps for RT effects, I'm just not going to be interested in their games.
 
No one cares that much about raytracing. It brings nothing new gameplay wise. Only a few weirdos obsess over such things.
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Again, it's about eliminating baked lighting and the wasted development time
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that's all taken care by the big game engines everyone uses these days. its a non argument. All path tracing is going to do is make games look even more like each other than those engines have already done.
 
RT is the biggest letdown for me. Only reflection matters sadly and you need puddles of water and night time settings with multiple light score to have an impression. In day time RT is pretty irrelevant IMO.

I would say AI based up-scaling should be the biggest factor so that we can have even 1080P resolution look good and devs concentrate on lighting, textures, LOD, framerate etc ...
 
Wolzard said:
It's still not ideal. It's solid in lightweight titles, like those that already use RT on consoles. When a game uses something a little more advanced or path tracing, the Radeons still fall behind.


RT-BMW-4K-p.webp
RT-Indiana-4K-p.webp
495452162_3514704948665607_3043038705672261943_n.jpg
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Its no secret PT is better on Nvidia. Normal RT scenarios run very well on a 9070xt in my experience.
 
Ray tracing as a standard sure, at this point all hardware can do it.

Path tracing as a standard, no. That requires so much more resources that it would hurt other aspects of the game just to get better lighting when RT gets really good lighting and reflections.

Hell, I'd be fine with more advancements of GL if more resources can go into textures, geometry and particles.

Though it feels like you think more advanced hardware means instantly having solid frame rate. This would be the case if you made games on the level of the PS5 for the PS6, but anything made specifically for the PS6 hardware would also push graphics harder, meaning it may be a minute before we get stable frame rates with high fidelity graphics. UE5 games are still a bit of a mess on consoles, you think UE6 wouldn't do the same thing?
 
Ray tracing individual effects is a waste of hardware resource, path tracing via ReSTIR related algorithms is the future. AMD already confirmed to you that they are focusing on path tracing via project Redstone.
 
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Nah, i am good. Sure it can look stunning, but you loose way too much performance. Pathtracing in particular is still relatively pointless with today's hardware.
 
I think PT would be awesome on PS6 but I can't imagine it at 60 fps. 30 fps... may be. I think next gen should basically be PT mode at 30 fps and RT performance mode at 60, like an earlier post said. Throw in frame gen to 120 Hz with RT performance for those that need that extra fluidity. They should splurge on AI cores so that they can use it beyond upscaling for ray reconstruction, denoising, neural textures, animation etc.

And throw in a beefy CPU this time around so that doesn't become a bottleneck!
 
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The continuing push for photorealism is what's killing gaming by bloating budgets and wasting man hours. I'll take solid art direction over photorealism most of the time.
 
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Ray Tracing is overrated and until framerate can be nailed down to a 60fps minimum for everything then I don't want it.

Photorealism is partly to blame for core issues with gaming today being that games are too expensive and take too long to make.

Some of the best looking games of all time are stylized. I would probably say the majority.
 
There are many trailers on YouTube where AI-trained characters showcase ultrarealistic animation and interactions.
Bring these into real games finally!

P.S. In terms of RT and PT... I hope to play some classic console games with PT (Quake 2, Half Life, Virtua Fighter 3, etc.)
 
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