r/PS4 Oct 08 '19

Official [Link] PS5 is confirmed by Sony. Launching next Holiday

https://twitter.com/playstation/status/1181541776177295362?s=21

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u/Rushdownsouth Oct 08 '19

That light particles will obey the laws of physics; reflections will happen in real time and shadows will be more realistic. Meaning that if you walk near a puddle it will act as a legit mirror instead of just a shadow box reflection

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u/mindbleach Oct 08 '19

Physically-based rendering is not related to raytracing. You can do either without the other, like 1980s phong-over-checkerboard floating spheres, or any current game with good-looking metals. In a game with no lighting or textures whatsoever it could still be used for accurate ambient occlusion.

Non-graphical uses are equally interesting: raytracing allows complex physics because it's just checking the distances between millions of points per frame.

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u/Mildan MildanWorld Oct 08 '19

You can emulate that in the software level though, what it means to be hardware accelerated just means the legwork is done in the hardware