Ray tracing
What ray tracing does to lighting and reflections in games, and what it costs in frame rate.
Ray tracing is a lighting technique that simulates how light actually travels — each ray bouncing off surfaces, passing through glass, and picking up colour along the way. Older games faked lighting with pre-made effects and tricks; ray tracing calculates it.
What you see is mostly in three places. Reflections show the real scene rather than a rough approximation — a puddle reflects the actual street, and a mirror shows what is genuinely in front of it. Shadows soften realistically with distance instead of holding a hard edge. And indirect lighting works properly: light bouncing off a red wall tints the room red.
Does ray tracing lower FPS?
Yes, and usually by a lot. It is one of the most expensive things a game can ask of its hardware, because the lighting is being computed rather than looked up. This is exactly why so many console games offer two modes: a Quality mode with ray tracing at 30 FPS, and a Performance mode with it reduced or switched off at 60 FPS.
Which to choose comes down to the game. In a slow, atmospheric single-player game where you have time to look around, ray tracing at 30 FPS can be the better experience. In anything fast — a shooter, a racer, a fighting game — 60 FPS is worth far more than prettier reflections you will never stop to look at.
PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X and Series S all support ray tracing, with the more powerful machines able to do more of it at once. On PC it depends on the graphics card, and it is usually adjustable in the settings rather than a simple on-off.