Crysis Remastered launched today and has been received warmly by fans. The remastered version is exactly the same as the original 2007 Crysis release, but with improved visuals and new controls. It has been confirmed that the remaster supports both software and hardware-based ray tracing at launch. The game will also be receiving a DLSS patch shortly.
Although Crysis Remastered only requires reasonable hardware, the "Can it run Crysis" mode is definitely a punishment for modern hardware. The remaster isn't just a joke, and if looked at closely, players can find all the hard work that has gone into achieving this marvel.
The game uses SVOGI (Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination), a lighting technique that makes Crysis Remastered look distinctly impressive compared to the original. The upgraded engine is capable of producing accurate reflections and players can see real time reflections on Nomad's suit in cutscenes.
In an interview with Crysis Remastered's project lead Steffen Halbig, PC Gamer asked about the reason for the inclusion of software-based ray tracing in Crysis Remastered when hardware-based ray tracing is becoming popular. Halbig replied, saying "what's special about software ray tracing is that you can use it with every card." He further added that "you can play it on a five or six-year-old graphics card—AMD or Nvidia you can choose."
Back in March 2019, Crytek showcased the capabilities of CryEngine's software-based ray tracing. There's no doubt that the results were convincing enough, but the same cannot be said for Crysis Remastered. Halbig explained that Crysis Remastered uses a combination of SSR, or Screen Space Reflections, and software-traced reflection to achieve the desired results. "If the screen space reflections give us the same results as the ray traced reflections, we use those for performance reasons, if not the system will jump to ray tracing," Halbig said.
PC Gamer also asked why Crysis Remastered uses DX11 when DX12 and Vulkan have become prevalent today, to which Halbig replied, "Yeah, it uses DX11, but we have the Vulkan extensions on top. It's a way which I think has never been done in a triple-A game before."
Crysis Remastered is out now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
