by Jet-boosting into this year's Summer Games Fest, Star Wars: Galactic Racer represents a bold new arcade-style project from the newly formed Fuse Games. While the studio is fresh, the team's pedigree is anything but; it reunites key personnel from the legendary Criterion Games, bringing a wealth of experience from the Burnout series and Star Wars: Battlefront. Having gone hands-on with a preview build on the base PlayStation 5, it is clear that the team is aiming for their most ambitious racing effort to date, leveraging Unreal Engine 5 to realise their vision ahead of the October 6th release.
The technical foundation of Galactic Racer relies heavily on UE5 to render its expansive stages and vehicles. The team opted for the engine due to its platform scalability and robust built-in features, allowing them to shift away from the Frostbite workflows familiar to the ex-Criterion staff - but probably alien to new joiners from other parts of the industry. Central to the visual fidelity is the use of photogrammetry to capture real-world materials, from terrain to Lucasfilm assets, which are then integrated into a physically-based material pipeline. To handle the complex, rocky terrain of environments like Jakku, the developers rely on Nanite to scale mesh complexity, which serves to minimise sharp level-of-detail transitions and reduce the need for aggressive post-production tuning.
The inclusion of explorable pre-race paddock areas is a wise one, given that it allows players a moment of respite to customise their speeders, design their characters, and tinker with liveries, all whilst exploring a dense, high-fidelity environment. Beyond the cosmetic appeal, these on-foot segments serve an important technical purpose: they allow the art assets to shine in low-intensity settings, compensating for the fact that minute details are often missed during the high-speed intensity of actual racing.
Lighting is a key pillar of the experience, with the team using UE5's Lumen global illumination across PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X. The implementation specifically targets the more robust hardware Lumen, providing superior lighting quality - such as dynamic light bounces in cave segments - while remaining performant enough to maintain the game's brisk pace. For reflections, the studio has opted for screen-space reflections rather than Lumen, a choice likely influenced by the low frequency of reflective surfaces and the demands of high-speed gameplay.
Performance on the base PS5 is currently targeting a strict 60fps, with the team eschewing a 30fps quality mode entirely. To achieve this, the game uses the dynamic resolution scaling supported by Unreal Engine 5's TSR upscaler, resulting in a presentation that currently falls between 1440p and 1690p - though these figures may shift for launch. While there are still noticeable frame-rate drops during scenes featuring heavy explosions or high densities of racers, the build is an early snapshot, and the studio is actively using overnight debug cycles to optimise these bottlenecks before launch.
On PS5 Pro, the team is replacing TSR with Sony's PSSR upscaling to deliver a sharper, more temporally stable image, whilst also dialling up particle density and effects quality to take advantage of the increased GPU headroom. Conversely, the Xbox Series S build disables hardware Lumen in favour of Unreal Engine 5's lightmass probes, a pragmatic solution that balances the necessity for a 60fps experience with minimal drops to overall aesthetic integrity. The same option will be available for lower-end PCs.
Speaking of which, the team is aiming to support a wide array of PC configurations, including handheld devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Xbox Ally - possibly at 30fps. Regardless of the output frame rate, the game maintains a consistent internal tick rate of 60Hz for vehicle physics and handling, ensuring a stable networked experience. For high-end users, the team reports hitting figures around 150fps on an RTX 4090 with frame generation and ray reconstruction enabled - which would suggest a base frame-rate around 80fps. The title will also support a full suite of upscaling solutions, including DLSS 4.5, Intel's XeSS and AMD's FSR 4.
The handling model promises to be the game's core appeal, with four distinct archetypes - ranging from landspeeders to podracers - designed to offer both accessibility and a significant skill ceiling. This is bolstered by a thermal mechanic where the environment directly impacts performance; for instance, the intense cold of Ando Prime might cause vehicles to freeze, forcing players to navigate near heat sources, while the lava caves of Lantaana alter jet performance inversely. The width of the courses ensures you can chart your own path, using the elements to your advantage - or your rivals' detriment. This adds a layer of strategic depth to track navigation, encouraging players to master the course rather than just the vehicle. And as the cherry on top, collisions with other players trigger a Burnout-style slow-motion takedown - exceptional.
Ultimately, Galactic Racer makes a strong first impression. By combining the destructive, high-speed DNA of the team's previous work with the modern rendering capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, Fuse Games has created a title that feels both nostalgic and forward-looking. While there is still balancing work to be done before the October 6th release, the technical foundations and the focus on physics-driven racing in the Star Wars universe sure sounds like a winning formula.