Though it’s already a visual powerhouse, Cyberpunk 2077 is about to get even more stunning courtesy of a free update (1.62) coming April 11. Officially called “RTX Path Tracing Overdrive,” this Nvidia-powered feature will basically make Night City a whole lot shinier.
What does this new tech actually do? According to Nvidia’s blog,
Path tracing, also known as full ray tracing, accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene. It’s used by visual effects artists to create film and TV graphics that are indistinguishable from reality…This technology preview, Cyberpunk 2077’s Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, is a sneak peak into the future of full ray tracing. With full ray tracing, now practically all light sources cast physically correct soft shadows. Natural colored lighting also bounces multiple times throughout Cyberpunk 2077’s world, creating more realistic indirect lighting and occlusion.
The upgrade was announced at GDC 2023, alongside the aforementioned “first look” tech demo that shows off what path tracing can do. The feature utilizes Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling, and has been used in movie and TV production by studios like Pixar.
As the Nvidia blog states, “It wasn’t until GeForce RTX 40 series and DLSS 3 was available that it was possible to bring path tracing to real-time graphics.” So to be clear this Overdrive upgrade will only be available on PCs with said GPUs that meet the spec requirements, which at this point haven’t been released.
Via Game Rant.
