Codemasters on F1 24’s PS5 Pro improvements: “the highest fidelity we’ve ever done”

Six months into F1 24’s life cycle, both the game and the sport it simulates have been through some significant changes. Hands up who had a pair of Hamilton victories, Max Verstappen’s abrupt loss of pace and the full-time return of Liam Lawson on their bingo cards? Now put them down, you fibbers.

Codemasters’ racer has had a slightly more predictable trajectory: positive launch reception, hardcore fans going ballistic about the things hardcore fans tend to go ballistic about but which most players wouldn’t notice, and then a steady accumulation of new race scenarios, challenge careers and periodic tidyings-up that keep the package competitive.

Then came PS5 Pro.

Suddenly the technical ceiling’s been lifted on F1 24’s PlayStation release. It’s akin to the FIA regs getting shredded, and a new document being circulated round the teams that reads: ‘Just make sure it’s got four wheels and looks cool’.

A bushel of visual improvements makes its way onto the grid in the PS5 Pro release, including ray-traced global illumination and shadows, a 4K, 120fps ‘performance’ mode and 8K, 60fps quality mode. Every F1 fan’s a closet statistician (“did you know it’s the first time a Ferrari’s won here since 2018?”) and those numbers warrant particularly close attention.

As impressive as they sound, what do they mean when you’re mid-lap? Where might you notice the improvements, specifically, on the track, and how do they aid your own performance as a driver? Technical producer Simon Lumb has the answers.

“The best place to see it is when you’re driving around Monaco,” says Lumb, of the ray-tracing effects new to the PS5 Pro version.

“You’re very close to very high buildings, full of balconies. With the old school lighting [techniques], you’d just end up with this really harsh line of shadow. It looks dark, and you can't find a way without baking extra lights in or faking it somehow. You can't really show that real light in a corner doesn't look that grey and hard.”

Real shadows are more nuanced, and it’s exactly that nuance that the new lighting effects add, using a complex real-time light simulation that bounces numerous rays from multiple light sources off numerous objects in the scene.

“And the reason to do that is because every step, when we look at our engine, is about reflecting reality as authentically as possible, making the places that you're racing look like the places they are in real life.”

So Monaco looks that bit more like Monaco. Las Vegas looks that bit more like a cautionary fable about hypercapitalism, and a rain-sodden Spa-Francorchamps looks that bit more dangerous.

There’s good news for F1 racers on other platforms, too - the work the team has done to level up the ray tracing effects “sets us up for kind of even more advanced ray tracing across all platforms that support it in the future", says Lumb.

Making shadows look more like shadows and the shiny rivulets of a modern aero part even more hypnotising is one side of the equation. The other is performance.

Producer Ross Waters – quite handy behind the virtual wheel himself, according to his colleagues – tells us that the jump up to 120 frames per second is all about marginal gains. You might notice a hundredth shaved off your lap time in the short term, but you really feel the benefits over the course of a full race.

“It's quite an interesting challenge, our game. I think the skill level can be very daunting for a new player, and even for an experienced player.

“We're talking tenths and thousandths of a second is a landmark gain, and we've seen that in the sport recently too. I think the best way [to feel the advantage of 120 fps] might not just be lap time, but in terms of actual race distances.

“I've always said our game is about rhythm, and if you are doing a 50 per cent race on a wheel, it can be exhausting. You're fighting people, especially in an online space, and you want to be able to feel – making decisions in an instant.

“So you get that base level responsiveness from 60 fps,” adds Lumb. “And the drivers who want  even more responsiveness get that from 120 fps.”

For players racing on PS5 Pro or any other platform, there’s more content arriving in season 4 which expands an already heaving F1 24 experience. New race scenarios including Abu Dhabi 2021 join the roster, and a new challenge career recreating some of Lewis Hamilton’s most iconic victories before he makes the jump over to a certain Maranello-based outfit.

There’s also a free weekend, kicking off 21 November 2024 and running until 25 Nov, during which time you can sample the updated F1 24 experience.

Only one question remains: who decides the new race scenarios and challenge careers?

“We have a host of historians throughout the studio,” Waters tells us.

“We sort of all meet up, have a big brainstorm on what we think will be the content players have either requested, maybe we've had community feedback on something they'd like to see, or key critical moments in the sport now. We like to pay homage… and take inspiration from history.”