Blog on Xbox Game Pass
1 gamesRay tracing simulates how individual light rays bounce around a scene, producing shadows, reflections and ambient lighting that look noticeably more realistic than traditional rasterized lighting. On Xbox Series X|S it's one of the clearest visual upgrades a Game Pass subscriber can chase, since it shows up most in reflective surfaces like water, glass and wet pavement, and in the way light spills naturally into interior rooms. Not every game in the library supports it, so this page rounds up the ones on Game Pass that do, letting you sort by rating to find the best-looking titles first.
Ray tracing is one of the more GPU-intensive features on this list, so expect some of these titles to run a slightly lower frame rate or resolution in their ray-traced graphics mode compared to their standard performance mode. Combine it with action & adventure games for the titles where reflective environments and dynamic lighting tend to matter most. Each title below is free with your subscription — the price shown is what it would cost to buy and keep. See other features or the full catalogue.
What is ray tracing in games?
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that traces individual rays of light through a scene to calculate realistic shadows, reflections and lighting, rather than approximating them the way traditional rasterization does.
Do I need a specific TV for ray tracing?
No special display is required — ray tracing is calculated by the console's GPU, though a higher-quality TV will still show off the extra lighting detail more clearly.