Spider-Man: Miles Morales Performance RT graphics mode serves up the best of both worlds

By Eric Abent/

Insomniac sneakily released a new update for Spider-Man: Miles Morales overnight, and though the update isn't very big in terms of overall size, it does add a big feature. The update adds a new graphics option to the game that appears to strike a balance between frame rate and graphics fidelity. If you're looking to play the game at 60 frames per second but don't want to sacrifice ray tracing to achieve that frame rate, then this new graphics option is definitely for you.

The new mode shipping to Spider-Man: Miles Morales today is called "Performance RT" mode, and as the name suggests, it comes with the benefits of Performance mode with some of the perks of Fidelity mode. Performance RT mode runs at 60fps – just as the "performance" moniker suggests – but importantly, it also keeps ray tracing.

Typically, we'd only expect ray tracing to be present in Fidelity mode, where frame rate is limited to a mere 30 frames per second. Twitter user ax_zer0 tweeted about the mode first, before Insomniac confirmed it in a subsequent tweet. In the screenshots ax_zer0 shared, we see a description of Performance RT mode that sheds a little more light on how we're able to run the game at 60fps while also enabling ray-tracing.

"This is an alternative version of the 60 frames per second 'Performance' mode, adding ray-tracing by adjusting the scene resolution, reflection quality, and pedestrian quality," that description reads. It's not clear what the new resolution is for Performance RT mode, but if we had to guess, we'd assume that the mode knocks it down to 1080p.

So, if you don't mind the hit to resolution or seeing the city streets a little less empty, then it sounds like Performance RT mode is worth checking out. Now the question is whether or not this new graphics mode will eventually come to Spider-Man Remastered on PS5. We'll let you know if Insomniac announces anything, so stay tuned for more.

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