Current Events > what is ray-tracing exactly?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm playing Marvel's Spooderman and there's two different 60 fps modes, one with ray tracing and one without. Which is better. I don't understand these fancy words they are using for descriptions.

Also I typo'd "ray-tracing" int he topic title as "race-tracing."

Very happy I caught that before posting.

A rendering technique that attempts to recreate more realistic lighting and reflections, that costs a lot of processing power to do in real time

its a rendering feature where light sources send out invisible beams that realistically reflect off surfaces to create real-time shadows, reflections, and material effects. Historically it's used in CG animation because It's unbelievably GPU intensive so most computers can't really run with it turned on in real-time, but newer technology is getting better at it.

In terms of consoles, you can think of a Raytracing setting as "do I want this game to run smoothly, or run like shit but look very pretty."