Ray-Tracing? Physics? Open Zones?

[PEANUT]

If we are, it won't be until after Dawntrail now. They've already had all the content/changes finalized and it's too late to add anything new. If we were getting a 2nd update in the near future, I feel like we would know by now.

My money is on 8.0 now for any hope of hearing something.

Yes, definitely! For sure I wouldn't expect anything during the lifecycle of Dawntrail, I really hope they do for 8.0 though! They implemented some really impressive tools that don't just upgrade the quality of the game but help with performance, like how they added polygons to the faces but every face uses the same number of polygons. I can only imagine if they focused their next expansion efforts on ditching the limitations of the old hardware and implementing some newer tools they could do something quite impressive with ray-tracing, physics, or weather, etc.

[PEANUT]

Well they would have to dump support for the old XBox and PS4 for Raytracing and meaningful physics. I doubt that will happen before the Xpac after Dawntrail.

Oh for sure! I think some positive news they gave, unless I am mistaken, is they are planning to drop PS4/XOne support in the future, I just don't remember if they specifically stated this or it was heavily implied?

[LianaThorne]

Oh for sure! I think some positive news they gave, unless I am mistaken, is they are planning to drop PS4/XOne support in the future, I just don't remember if they specifically stated this or it was heavily implied?

Assumption by the community AFAIK.

[CaptainLagbeard]

They did drop PS3 support with Stormblood, it would be the logical assumption that PS4/Xbox One support would eventually drop as well. People were speculating it would happen with DT but it would seem to not be the case, but it's extremely likely to happen at the release of the next expansion at the latest.

[Jeeqbit]

People were speculating it would happen with DT

I would have never expected it to happen with DT. It takes years for people to slowly decide to upgrade things and there was a massive shortage of PS5s for a few years which has to be taken into account. But it would make sense for them to consider it for 8.0, because by then PS5 will technically have been out for about 6 years and PS4 for 13 years.

Currently, only about 50% of Playstation users have upgraded to PS5.

[Azureskies01]

There will not be any ray tracing in the game until it gets updated to support either DX12 or Vulkan as DX11 can not do RT anything.

They are putting FSR1 in the game and not FSR2 and leaving out any frame gen tech so I'm pretty sure they didn't do a lot in terms of PC optimizations. Maybe they pulled a Warframe and rewrote their lightning engine which will go a long way in how the game looks and possibly even optimized it to be able to run on older consoles to a degree. Big picture though, I assume most people will be disappointed with how same-y the game will look besides the lighting. That said they could knock it out of the park with the texture of all the gear and make it really pop but they haven't showed any of that stuff off yet. Also the anti aliasing implementation better be good otherwise it will look like a temporal mess like other games that just throw TAA in and hope it works out.

Long story short, don't get your hopes up. Better grass, lighting, textures (maybe) and AA, that is pretty much all you are getting in the update.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I would have never expected it to happen with DT. It takes years for people to slowly decide to upgrade things and there was a massive shortage of PS5s for a few years which has to be taken into account. But it would make sense for them to consider it for 8.0, because by then PS5 will technically have been out for about 6 years and PS4 for 13 years.

Currently, only about 50% of Playstation users have upgraded to PS5.

Yea the PS5 hasn't exactly been the most popular system, but with the graphics update quite reasonably increasing requirements it would've made sense for the older system to start losing support... But I don't mind them keeping them going for a few more years.

[Rekh]

There will not be any ray tracing in the game until it gets updated to support either DX12 or Vulkan as DX11 can not do RT anything.

They are putting FSR1 in the game and not FSR2 and leaving out any frame gen tech so I'm pretty sure they didn't do a lot in terms of PC optimizations. Maybe they pulled a Warframe and rewrote their lightning engine which will go a long way in how the game looks and possibly even optimized it to be able to run on older consoles to a degree. Big picture though, I assume most people will be disappointed with how same-y the game will look besides the lighting. That said they could knock it out of the park with the texture of all the gear and make it really pop but they haven't showed any of that stuff off yet. Also the anti aliasing implementation better be good otherwise it will look like a temporal mess like other games that just throw TAA in and hope it works out.

Long story short, don't get your hopes up. Better grass, lighting, textures (maybe) and AA, that is pretty much all you are getting in the update.

Well stated; real polygon/mesh changes and overall graphical fidelity outside of character's faces won't be there. Let's hope AI can remesh the sausage fingers and blocky thighs in some future.

[Jeeqbit]

remesh the sausage fingers and blocky thighs in some future.

I recall them mentioning improvements to the fingers actually.

[PEANUT]

There will not be any ray tracing in the game until it gets updated to support either DX12 or Vulkan as DX11 can not do RT anything.

They are putting FSR1 in the game and not FSR2 and leaving out any frame gen tech so I'm pretty sure they didn't do a lot in terms of PC optimizations. Maybe they pulled a Warframe and rewrote their lightning engine which will go a long way in how the game looks and possibly even optimized it to be able to run on older consoles to a degree. Big picture though, I assume most people will be disappointed with how same-y the game will look besides the lighting. That said they could knock it out of the park with the texture of all the gear and make it really pop but they haven't showed any of that stuff off yet. Also the anti aliasing implementation better be good otherwise it will look like a temporal mess like other games that just throw TAA in and hope it works out.

Long story short, don't get your hopes up. Better grass, lighting, textures (maybe) and AA, that is pretty much all you are getting in the update.

That's a shame, thanks for your reply :\... I do like to try and remain an optimistic person though, setting the new base requirements for PS5/XSX level come 8.0 if/when they most likely drop support for PS4/XOne(which will be 13 years old by the time of 8.0 in 2026 earliest) I would imagine there's more improvements they can make for the game hopefully with increased hardware baselines. But based on what you're saying, they COULD potentially if they wanted upgrade to DX12 or Vulkan and this would allow them to develop/implement ray-tracing options? Do you think this is plausible? If they are at least finally updating AA in the game from the ancient FXAA and implementing FSR1 and DLSS 2, isn't it possible come 8.0 they could upgrade to even newer FSR/DLSS and maybe finally upgrade to DX12?