The Xbox Series X dedicated audio hardware accelaration is going to be used for some very interesting, among them something that Microsoft calls Audio Ray Tracing.

　　Speaking in a recent podcast, director of Xbox program management Jason Ronald revealed that the Xbox Series X will feature ray traced audio, which will be a new spatial audio feature.

　　With the introduction of hardware accelerated ray tracing with the Xbox series X, we’re actually able to enable a whole new set of scenarios, whether that’s more realistic lighting, better reflections, we can even use it for things like spatial audio and have ray traced audio

　　Sadly, no other detail has been revealed, but it's clear, at this point, how the evolution of audio is going to be a big focus for both the Microsoft next-gen console and the PlayStation 5, as Marc Cerny revealed last year.

　　Microsoft will talk more about the new console's audio hardware acceleration during this year's GDC.

　　Learn from the audio designers of Borderlands 3 and Gears of War 5 around how a collaboration between Microsoft, Dolby, and our middleware partners kicked off a revolution with spatial sound that turns any pair of headphones into a multi-dimensional gateway to another world. Attendees will dive deep into the audio design pipeline (Project Acoustics) and the relationship to dedicated hardware-acceleration on newer generation Xbox consoles.

　　New details on the Xbox Series X specs have been revealed yesterday. Microsoft finally confirmed that the console will feature a 12 TF GPU.

　　Next Generation Custom Processor: Xbox Series X is our most powerful console ever powered by our custom designed processor leveraging AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures. Delivering four times the processing power of an Xbox One and enabling developers to leverage 12 TFLOPS of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performance – twice that of an Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One. Xbox Series X delivers a true generational leap in processing and graphics power with cutting edge techniques resulting in higher framerates, larger, more sophisticated game worlds, and an immersive experience unlike anything seen in console gaming.

　　The Xbox Series X launches later this year worldwide.