Xbox Series X | S Games With Ray Tracing: The Complete List

Everybody Loves Ray Tracing.

Xbox Series

As the gaming industry continues to advance, so do the technologies and techniques used to make your games look shinier and brighter than ever before. One of those features is called ray tracing, which certain games on your Xbox Series X | S will be utilising in order to improve the visual fidelity of your games.

However, it can be hard to know which games on the Xbox Series X | S actively support ray tracing specifically. There are a lot of Xbox Series X | S optimised games, but not all of them have ray tracing enabled. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of all the Xbox Series X | S games that use ray tracing in some form or another.

 

Which Xbox Series X | S Games Support Ray Tracing?

Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite

Because the technology that allows video games to support ray tracing is relatively new, there’s not a huge list of games for the Xbox Series X | S that feature ray tracing, but it’s a decent start. There’s also some announced games or already released games that’ll feature ray tracing in the future. That said, it’s mostly a privilege granted to games that have a bigger budget, meaning there aren’t many indie games on this list.

Here are all of the ray traced games on Xbox Series X | S:

Bright Memory
Bright Memory: Infinite (coming soon)
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (ray tracing is only available on the Xbox Series X)
Call of the Sea
Chorus: Rise as One (coming soon)
Cyberpunk 2077 (coming soon)
Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition (ray tracing is only available on the Xbox Series X)
Enlisted
Forza Motorsport (coming soon)
Gears 5
Halo Infinite (coming soon)
Maneater
NBA 2K21
Observer: System Redux
Poker Club
Resident Evil Village (coming soon)
RIDE 4
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (coming soon)
The Medium
Watch Dogs Legion

 

What Is Ray Tracing And Do I Need It?

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that uses pixels to trace a path of light in an image plane and reflecting the result onto a surface. This process allows computer generated images to be displayed at a higher level of visual quality and realism. For the most part, ray tracing was too much of a costly process to work in video games, as it would lead to a significant decline in framerate which would negatively impact most games. Now that graphics cards and next-gen consoles are available, ray tracing should become a more prevalent component of gaming.

As for whether or not you need it, that depends on how shiny you like your surfaces. Again, ray tracing often leads to a significant hit to your framerate and resolution, but does result in more realistic looking graphics. For certain games (i.e. games that don’t require fast framerates), ray tracing is a good option, but otherwise, it’s not essential.

READ MORE: The Best Xbox Series X | S Couch Co-Op Games

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.