I didn’t mention it as much as I perhaps should have in my preview, but I was truly taken aback by Star Wars: Galactic Racer’s visuals when I went hands-on last week.
Testing unfinished code on base PS5 hardware, the presentation utterly astonished me – I know most games look good these days, but the quality of the environments left my jaw agape a couple of times.
Now Digital Foundry has turned in an initial report based on this unfinished version of the code, and it’s remarkable what new dev Fuse Games has achieved here.
Leveraging Unreal Engine 5, this game basically takes advantage of all Epic’s fancy features, including photogrammetry to capture real-world materials and LucasFilm assets, making the various planets and vehicles look photorealistic.
It blends this with Nanite to create complex environment meshes, which again seriously sell the scale and authenticity of each scene. And then on top of that it’s using Lumen for some wild lighting effects, particularly noticeable when you race through enclosed spaces, like caves.
The slower walking sections I mentioned in my preview will allow you to appreciate all of these details up-close.
There are compromises, of course: the game’s sticking with screen-space reflections as opposed to ray-traced ones, but this is relatively minor considering all the technical features elsewhere.
In addition, it should be noted that the game runs at a fairly smooth 60fps. Personally, I didn’t notice any real drops on base PS5 hardware, but Digital Foundry’s analysis does detect some dips into the 50s in this unfinished build. The team still has a few months to iron these out, though.
The game also supports the PS5 Pro where it’ll run at a higher base resolution and leverage PSSR2 for a cleaner upscale up to 4K. Sony’s supercharged system will also dial up some of the effects, making it the best console to play the game, as you’d expect.
All in all, though, I’ve been blown away by the technical wizardry on display here. This game is seriously awesome, and I do wonder whether it’s going to give Forza Horizon 6 a run for its money during awards season, which may not be the shoe-in Best Racing Game winner after all.
[source digitalfoundry.net]
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As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.