F1 2021 makes ‘difficult decision’ to temporarily patch out ray tracing on PS5

The first major post-launch patch for F1 2021 has temporarily removed ray tracing on the PlayStation 5 version of the game.

Update 1.04 was released for PC a few days ago, but only made it to consoles yesterday along with the new tweak for the PS5 version.

According to the patch notes on the official F1 2021 website, the studio was aware of performance issues on the PS5 and concluded that the issues were due to the ray-tracing effect.

To fix this, the team has “taken the difficult decision to temporarily disable it” to add stability to the game. Codemasters says it now aims to enable ray tracing again as quickly as possible, and will provide an update when it’s ready.

The Xbox Series X and PC versions of the game will continue to have ray tracing enabled, because the issue only appears to be present on the PS5 version.

The patch also fixes an issue where players on all formats were getting corrupt save files if they edited their vehicle’s livery.

F1 2021 Update 1.04 Patch Notes

• Addressed an issue where users would experience a corrupt save if they edited their vehicle’s livery from within the MyTeam HQ. Saves that were previously corrupted as a result of this bug will be able to be resumed after applying the patch.
• PlayStation®5 only: We are aware of some instability within the game for a limited number of users on PS5 relating to Ray Tracing. As such, we have taken the difficult decision to temporarily disable it to aid stability. We aim to re-enable this as quickly as possible, and we will provide an update in due course.