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Samsung wants to optimise ray tracing for phones

The graphical fidelity boost for mobile games would be substantial

Samsung wants to optimise ray tracing for phones

Mobile giant Samsung have revealed that they want to help optimise ray-tracing techniques to boost graphical fidelity in games.

Ray teaching techniques in games are used to simulate shadows, lights, reflections and other difficult-to-render effects. However, the performance cost is significant and thus the tech has been restricted purely to high-end GPUs in gaming PC’s. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung has outlined their moves to make such techniques possible on their mobile devices, reports SamMobile.

It’s not the first time the company has dabbled with incorporating ray tracing tech, as it revealed the Exynos 2200 processor last year, which they billed as capable of ray tracing. But Samsung now seems interested in making this tech faster, less hardware intensive and available to nearly all developers on mobile.

How feasible is it?

Even now, years after it was first revealed, ray tracing has remained a luxury for many players. With only certain graphics cards being capable of running the tech, many games featuring it bill it as a luxury feature. Or we mainly see it used as a novelty, such as for older games upgraded to include ray tracing, including Quake II RTX or Half Life RTX. Bringing this tech to mobile may encounter significant hurdles beyond software and hardware, a factor Samsung does seem to be taking into account as they have recently begun partnering with hardware manufacturers Qualcomm to include their high-power processors in their phones, even dumping longtime partner Exynos in favour of it.

For example even if well optimised, the ray tracing tech will most likely only be available on certain devices. In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, devs are likely to only consider this as optional, if included at all. There’s also the question of just what kind of games would benefit from running this tech, as many mobile games use stylised or simplistic graphics specifically to avoid taxing player’s varied hardware.

Samsung, however, seems increasingly eager to court the esports and growing mobile shooter scene, even sponsoring large scale tournaments such as the Snapdragon Pro Series. So if we’re going to see ray tracing feature in mobile soon, it’ll probably be in games similar to PUBG Mobile, or other titles that emulate the full 3D worlds and effects of a mainline console or PC game.


Staff Writer

Iwan is a Cardiff-based freelance writer, who joined the Pocket Gamer Biz site fresh-faced from University before moving to the Pocketgamer.com editorial team in November of 2023.