F1 23: a huge technical upgrade – but do the new RT features make a difference?

The release of Codemaster’s F1 23 gives us the most complete version of the series to date, with an upgraded version of its in-house EGO Engine and the return of the fan-favourite Braking Point story mode. The game also includes more ray tracing features, as this year dynamic diffuse global illumination (DDGI) is added on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC. DDGI extends an already deep list of RT technologies from last year’s game, which included reflections, ambient occlusion and shadows. Going into the game, I was curious to see how much of an upgrade DDGI enables, how close PS5 and Series X can come to the maxed-out PC version, and what settings make sense for PC players.

Let’s get to the basics first. Both PS5 and Xbox Series X target a full 3840×2160 during gameplay, with matching shadows, textures and draw distances. Interestingly, the game’s many RT features are only active during menu sequences, pre-race buildup and replays. Once the race begins, traditional rasterised techniques like screen space reflections (SSR) and ambient occlusion (SSAO) replace the RT reflections, RT shadows, RTAO, and DDGI. These less demanding techniques allow these consoles to hit the full 4K, while with RT enabled you’ll see scaling from lower resolutions – the lowest I spotted was 3072×1728 during replays (80 percent of 4K). Alongside the resolution drop, these RT-enabled areas also tend to run at an obviously sub-60fps frame-rate, including a 30fps cap in the menus.

Series S is an interesting one, as it has all of the same quality settings and RT features as on PS5 and Series X, and all of the same compromises too. However, the game does run at a lower resolution, with a 1080p target that holds up reasonably well with the game’s temporal anti-aliasing (TAA). In RT areas, dynamic resolution scaling is again used, but the game remains close to 1080p even in the most challenging menu sequences.

Read more