A first look at ray tracing on the $ 299 Xbox Series S



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Ubisoft provided a first look at ray tracing on next-gen Xbox consoles a few weeks ago, and now we’ve had a chance to play the optimized version of Watch Dogs: Legion on the Xbox Series X and Series S. The most noticeable change from a regular Xbox One or PS4 version of the game is the introduction of ray tracing for Series X and S.

On both consoles there are plenty of reflective windows, puddles and neon neon signs in the London world of Watch Dogs: Legion. They are all ideal for ray tracing. These ray-traced reflections more accurately illustrate the often wet and dark parts of London, and it often feels like there are many puddles on the ground in Watch Dogs: Legion just ready to reflect nearby light sources.

One of the best places to demonstrate this in the game is Piccadilly Circus, a tourist hotspot in the heart of London’s West End theater district. There are big screens, reflective puddles, neon signs, and plenty of windows nearby to really show off ray tracing at night.

The $ 299 Xbox Series S handles most of these well, despite running at 30fps at 1080p. I’m actually surprised at this first example of ray tracing on this smaller next-gen Xbox. Because the Xbox Series S is capable of outputting in 4K, I played Watch dogs is a 4K OLED TV.

While the game isn’t rendered in 4K on the S series, the console improves the picture quality of its 1080p target to 4K. The result is sometimes a little rough around the edges, but an OLED TV certainly helped hide the fact that the image is being converted from 1080p for me.

The $ 499 Xbox Series X targets 4K resolution at 30 fps, and the picture quality is often close to the ultra settings found on the PC version of the game. I also tested Watch Dogs: Legion on a PC with a Core i9-10900K and the latest RTX 3090 graphics card from Nvidia. The PC version is obviously superior thanks to a higher frame rate, improved ray tracing effects, and a bit more detail, but the Xbox Series X is also surprisingly close.

Ray tracing appears to be one of the biggest promises of this next generation of consoles, but we weren’t able to fully test it on the Xbox Series X and S during the review period. The PS5 also uses ray tracing in a variety of games, including Spider-Man Miles Morales, which includes either a 30 fps ray tracing mode or a 60 fps performance mode. We could not test Watch Dogs: Legion on the PS5 for now.

We may have to wait to see a next-gen AAA game running at 60 fps with plenty of ray tracing effects enabled, but these early examples on Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5 are encouraging. We are sure to see even more impressive examples in the months and years to come.

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