Xbox Series X supports ‘audio ray tracing’ and retains savestates on reboot

The Xbox Series X console supports hardware ray tracing, which means that “audio ray tracing” is possible, according to Microsoft. The option to stop a game at any point to continue seamlessly later is not hindered by a reboot.

Support for hardware ray tracing not only enables more realistic lighting and better reflections, but also spatial audio via ray tracing. Jason Ronald, director of program management at Xbox Live, made this known in a podcast. According to Ronald, the intention is that the user is more immersed in the game world, because the sound is placed more precisely in the room. It is unclear to what extent that adds anything compared to the support of the Dolby Atmos standard on the Xbox One; Ronald gave no further details.

Larry Hryb, Xbox Live director of programming, also took part in the podcast episode and spoke about the console’s Quick Resume feature, among other things. That gives gamers the ability to end a gaming session anywhere and continue at that point at a later time, without any loading screens or waiting times. According to Hryb, this function is available for various games thanks to the custom built SSD in the XBox Series X. This allows players to quickly switch between sessions of those games. Hryb explains that the option to quickly resume a point in a game is also possible after a reboot of the console. That means a system update won’t interrupt progress in a game session and players can simply turn off their consoles and pick up where they left off at a later date.

Recently, Microsoft shared some new and already known details about the Xbox Series X, including the information that the GPU has a processing power of twelve teraflops. This makes the new console twice as powerful as the current Xbox One X. The processor will be a modified design based on AMD’s Zen 2 CPU architecture and the RDNA 2 GPU architecture. The console also supports variable rate shading and the so-called Smart Delivery feature, which should automatically help players get the correct version of a game for the Xbox console they are using.