by We've published a sponsored video on 007 First Light, with developers IO Interactive offering a refreshing level of insight into the technical underpinnings of its upcoming James Bond epic. The video runs to more than 100 minutes, so here are seven bite-sized highlights we pulled out from conversations between Alex and IO Interactive engineers.
1. Xbox Series S runs at 30fps: With the game running noticeably below 30fps in its first console reveal, it's perhaps not a surprise that the Xbox Series S version is limited to that target, even while Xbox Series X and PS5 offer 60fps modes. Lead render engineer Alex Mueller told us that the decision was down to the studio's "scalability-first" philosophy. Rather than stripping out key visual systems like lighting and volumetrics to eke out a 60fps mode that worked within the RAM and GPU constraints of Series S, IO preferred to maintain visual parity with the higher-end consoles at 30fps. The same philosophy will be used for low-end PC hardware and the later Switch 2 release, ensuring that high-end features like the new volumetrics can scale down without being entirely removed.
2. Software-based ray tracing for global illumination is a key Glacier engine feature: While some modern titles rely on hardware-accelerated ray tracing, IO developed a custom software ray tracing pipeline for its real-time global illumination probes. By tracing against distance fields and using voxels for material data entirely in software, the team achieved a highly optimised system that scales across all target platforms without requiring specific RT hardware for its base lighting.
3. The Smolder volumetric system is critical for the more chaotic firefights in First Light versus Hitman: Another significant advancement in the Glacier Engine is a new unified volumetric system internally called Smolder. Unlike the purpose-built clouds or fog seen in other engines, Smolder integrates seamlessly with the game's lighting and order-independent transparency systems, allowing every light source in the scene to cast dynamic shadows through and from volumetric effects, such as smoke grenades.
4. Real-time level streaming was retrofitted to suit the continuous nature of gameplay: Historically, the Glacier Engine was designed for discrete, level-based loading (as seen in Hitman). For 007 First Light, the team retrofitted the engine with fully dynamic brick loading and unloading. This allows the game to transition seamlessly from a static manor house to a high-speed driving sequence and onto a moving plane without loading screens, all while maintaining a 60fps target.
5. Transitioning to motion matching animation was key: To move away from the binary feel of previous interactions, IO Interactive replaced its old middleware with a custom, engine-integrated animation system using Motion Matching. This technology allows James Bond to move with much higher fluidity and contextual variety; for example, the character uses around 100 different animations just for walking at a gala, compared to about 10 in previous titles.
6. Advanced clustered lighting allows for massive light counts: The engine has moved from the 2D tile-based light culling used in Hitman to a modern 3D clustered lighting system. This allows artists to place upwards of 1,500 lights in a single environment. The system utilizes wave intrinsics to efficiently cull these down to a manageable 100–200 lights per frame, enabling much more complex and dense lighting setups than previously possible.
7. Hitting 60fps on PS5 and Series X was tricky: Beyond the usual mix of downgraded settings and lower resolutions, hitting 60fps on consoles relies on the Glacier Engine's aggressive use of async compute, ensuring the GPU is fully saturated at all times. The core renderer was also modernised with a frame graph system that manages resource dependencies, allowing the engine to schedule individual rendering passes efficiently. CPU optimisation was also key, with expensive tasks like physics simulations, AI and animation moved off the critical path and onto parallelisable worker threads.
These are just some of the highlights from the video, so do settle down with a cup of cocoa to watch the entire thing when you have a moment! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below.