Details on Ray Tracing in The Medium

In a recent interview, Jacek Zieba - producer at Krakow-based Polish studio Bloober Team - presented a few details about the implementation of ray tracing in the upcoming survival horror The Medium.

IN A NUTSHELL:

The Medium will have two ray tracing modes - Performance and Quality;
SSD allowed the developers to do more with console versions, but an HDD is enough to enjoy the game on PCs due to different architecture.

Wccftech conducted an interview with Jacek Zieba from Bloober Team. The subject of the conversation was of course the upcoming survival horror game The Medium, which the company has been working on for some time now. We got to know, among others, a few details about the implementation of ray tracing in this title.

"We have two supported ray tracing modes for The Medium - Performance Mode that has enabled reflections and RTAO in all performant location (when only one word is rendered), and Quality Mode, which features reflections, RTAO, hybrid translucent, and some RT shadows enabled for the whole game world. The latter is paired with DLSS and some other Nvidia improvements but requires a lot of hardware power," we read in the interview.

Another topic in the conversation was the SSD. The developers have no doubt that the presence of this type of media in next-gen consoles enabled things that were previously out of reach. It is worth noting that in the case of PCs, an SSD will not be required. By not having it, we have to reckon with longer loading times, but besides that the game should work without major obstacles on a standard HDD. This is directly due to the differences between the PC and console architecture.

"As we’ve been using level-streaming in our games for a long time, we have made every effort to ensure that the experience on a PC running the recommended specs is as close as possible to that on the new Microsoft console. For PC players, SSD is recommended but not required, so yes, loading times will be increased when using an HDD. That being said there's quite a bit of difference between console and PC architecture.

To get a little more technical, PC linear transfer from a standard HDD is 100MB/s on average, while the previous generation of consoles have just a third of this value. So when you couple that with the IO cache that a PC’s operating system manages, you get loading times of only a few seconds longer than the average SSD. Sure, you’ll see some texture pop-in here and there, but you’ll still be able to enjoy The Medium from an HDD," explains the developer.

We would like to remind that The Medium will debut on January 28, this year on PC, Xbox Series X / S. The game will be available as part of the Xbox Game Pass service.