I thought about bringing this thread back since it appears to be a possibility that both next gen consoles will have some sort of ray tracing capability. I believe one of the graphical features that can separate this gen from the next is advance lighting technique. Do anyone believe that either Sony or MS will actually include any hardware ray tracing capability within their console or are they just saying that through software API, there will be support.

Most likely both will come with hardware acceleration like Nvidia's RTX Turing series ... 

I am wondering by the time each console hit the market will the API mature for hardware acceleration ray tracing with Nvidia implementation out in the wild. Even though the implementation will be AMD, they probably still adhering to MS API toolset and looking to accelerate the API in some form or fashion. Would ray tracing add enough graphical push to make next gen worth wanting or will people still be looking for better performance like 4K 60FPS. I know for slower games, ray tracing can really give a huge graphical edge and seperate next gen games from current gen if done right.

That's extraordinary.

Where can I pick up my ps5?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but will ray tracing help with loading times as well? No more light / cube / shadow / reflection maps etc to load for each scene, instead rendered on the fly. That should also reduce the game size, faster downloads, faster patching. It should also reduce the workload on the development side.

Machiavellian indeed.

Excellent prediction if the rumours are true.

Not really, cube/shadow/reflection maps are mostly generated in real time using either the fixed function units or shaders. Light maps hardly take any storage space. You're going to be disappointed if you think ray tracing will improve loading times but it's going to vastly improve visual quality leaving last gen systems in the dust ... 

I was under the impression Assassin's creed Unity was so big (file size) because of the light maps. Every bit helps anyway, but the SSD will have a much bigger impact of course.

Ray tracing in VR will be magical. No clue if the ps5 can pull that off, yet holding a flash light with ray traced light and shadows is going to be mind blowing :)

Meh, let's save ray tracing in VR for the upgraded PS5 SKU. My biggest hope is that the PS5 will double the ray count of the RTX 2080 Ti to 20B rays/s with some improvements to feature set. Personally, I'm more excited about using ray tracing for a more diverse set of materials like glass which can exhibit refractive/transmissive properties. Caustics are more exciting than bounce lighting or shadows IMO ...

Afaik resolution is the main determining factor for ray tracing. Since VR is lower resolution it should be more do-able to ray trace in VR than in 4K. Currently the wide fov (and double view) is what's hampering VR, however it should need less ray trace samples than a 4K game.