Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Mod download: nexusmods.com/sonicracingcrossworlds/mods/61

It's a well-known fact that the PS5 Closed Network Test for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds utilized Unreal Engine 5's Lumen lighting/reflections system, and that it was changed to baked lightmaps/screen-space reflections for the Open Network Test and everything after that. It's theorized that this was done to help with performance, considering the game did come out on the PS4, Xbox One and Switch 1.

However, it is possible to re-enable Lumen... except with very hit or miss results. For this example, Donpa Factory looks alright, Aqua Forest, Hidden World and White Space still use the baked lighting (except for the shadow distance being shorter) and Eggman Expo looks... bad, with at least one section looking borderline pitch black.

And then the final race has a strange green lighting applied to both Donpa Factory and Eggman Expo! (kinda like how some home video releases of The Matrix movies had a rather noticeable green tint when compared to theatrical releases or something, idk its difficult to explain and its like 1:30AM as i type this. Noodle has a pretty neat video discussing that: youtube.com/watch?v=lPU-kXEhSgk)

So my personal theory now is that Sonic Team not only switched to baked lighting after the Closed Network Text for performance across all platforms, but because they were likely having issues with getting Lumen to work properly with the CrossWorlds mechanic involving stage lighting. Keep in mind this _is_ their first game using Unreal after all (and yet, they managed to make a better-optimized UE5 game than most others on their first try)

Anyways. While I did do the standard procedure for re-enabling Lumen, I also had to adjust a few values (seems related to reflections) so that stages weren't completely pitch black (had this issue with Donpa Factory at first), making it near-impossible to even see. And that's a real bad thing for racing games, considering you really gotta see what's ahead of you.

And, as you can see, the game slows down at parts due to frame-rate drops, as a result of the high system requirements needed for Lumen. (Unreal's "fixed frame-rate" option ends up tying the game speed to the frame-rate, which is what CrossWorlds uses. Similar situation to Sonic Lost World.) Considering that Lumen does utilize ray tracing (both software-based and hardware-based) this isn't all that much of a surprise. I *did* record with the frame-rate counter enabled in NVIDIA but for some reason it doesn't show up. Ah well.

Even still, I think I might actually be the first person to make a video on this. (Could be wrong though, so do correct me if I am)

Also I chose Big as the rival here since I find his and Zavok's interaction funny.

Mods used (besides mine):
Riders Zavok by @thehawk3384 - gamebanana.com/mods/625952
Zeti Eyes Fix by @Nutra2392 - gamebanana.com/mods/646338