For all of the ups and downs which have come and gone with Cyberpunk 2077, you may’t deny that it’s a fantastic sport set in a surprising world. It’s going to get slightly extra beautiful quickly, no less than in case your PC can deal with it, due to a deliberate path tracing replace. One of many artists answerable for Evening Metropolis, CDProjekt Crimson’s Jakub Knapik, instructed us all about it on the ground of the Recreation Builders Congress. Test it out within the newest PCWorld video.
For the uninitiated, path tracing is a extra superior model of ray tracing, which has been one thing of a buzzword in high-end graphics for the previous couple of years. Ray tracing is a physics-based mannequin that calculates the best way particular person rays of sunshine transfer by means of house and bounce off a number of objects, giving extra practical illumination and reflections. Path tracing, whereas technically a synonym for a similar course of, refers to a extra processor-friendly solution to optimize all of that math, collapsing a number of rays right into a much less processor-intensive idealized path. That mentioned, it’s additionally extra resource-intensive in apply, as path tracing additionally requires precisely simulating all mild sources in a sport, quite than selecting and selecting choose lighting options (resembling shadows and reflections) such as you do with commonplace ray traced video games. (This Nvidia path tracing explainer goes a lot, a lot deeper should you’re within the nitty-gritty.)
The present ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 makes it a showcase of contemporary graphics tech, however when the trail tracing know-how preview comes out, it ought to look even higher. You’ll want a beastly graphics card to grab full benefit, little doubt, even with performance-boosting options like DLSS 3 Body Era lively.
The patch will probably be accessible on April eleventh, as a free replace to the PC model of Cyberpunk 2077. For extra deep dives into the newest and biggest in PC gaming, be sure you subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.
