During my review playthrough of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I opted for the Fidelity Mode at 30 fps because too much detail was lost using the Performance Mode at 60 fps, most notably a lack of ray tracing. The most recent update adds a nice middle ground with a brand new “Performance RT” mode, which adds ray tracing to the 60 fps gameplay.
The new Performance RT mode does come with some caveats. The scene is presented in a lower resolution, so no 4K here. The quality of the reflections is lowered, and pedestrian density is decreased to account for the power needed. Insomniac describes it as “an alternate version of the 60 frames per second Performance mode, adding ray-tracing by adjusting the scene resolution, reflection quality, and pedestrian density.”
You won’t need to sacrifice a ton of storage space for the patch either. The update runs just 261.9 MB to add the new mode. Early impressions of Performance RT are quite positive, saying (and showing) that the details and reflections don’t take that much of a hit over the 30 fps Fidelity mode, all while allowing people to play Miles Morales at a buttery smooth 60 fps.
Earlier this year, Digital Foundry did a thorough analysis of power requirements for elements such as frame rates, resolution, ray tracing, and world density, coming to the conclusion that 30 fps opens up a lot of computing power allocation to be used elsewhere within a game. They also pointed out that developers are just finding their footing with the new consoles, and as we’re very clearly seeing here with Insomniac’s work on Spider-Man, getting the hang of how the PS5 prioritizes power is allowing them to do continue to make these adjustments to offer a balance of both the best fidelity and performance possible.
Performance RT mode doesn’t replace either of the other two modes (Fidelity and Performance), so players now have more options to tailor how their game experience looks and feels. The new update makes me eager to head back into Miles Morales to clean up the rest of my Trophy list at a smooth 60 frames. Have you tried out the new Spider-Man Miles Morales Performance RT mode yet?
[Via: VGC]