Cyberpunk 2077 is getting path-traced Overdrive in April

Nvidia will improve Cyberpunk 2077’s graphics even further, this time with path tracing.

Nvidia wants game developers to know that ray tracing is not an end in itself. The new Cyberpunk 2077 tech demo supports path tracing to make the game even more luxurious and make you buy even more expensive graphics cards! -. The two-year-old game has joined Minecraft, Portal and Quake II, games with rather primitive graphics that already support this technology. In addition, Nvidia has announced the release of an SDK to pave the way for breathtaking next-gen graphics.

Nvidia will continue to improve the graphics of Cyberpunk 2077

While ray tracing follows a single ray of light in a virtual scene, path tracing follows light as it bounces off the environment, more realistically reproducing the physical world around us. The technology determines how surrounding surfaces reflect or absorb light, creating precise shadows that further reassure our brains that what we are looking at is a natural, real scene. And the fact that people can perceive these graphics more realistically is obviously a big step forward for the video game industry. Hollywood has been using path tracing for decades, but the process has always been slow and expensive and impossible to use for the general public or in real time.

this time thanks to path tracing

That being said, you should keep in mind that you will need a very powerful graphics card, such as the Nvidia RTX 40 series, to take advantage of Cyberpunk 2077’s path tracing (and there may still be performance issues). In any case, Nvidia is already ready to provide more and more in order to have very high-quality graphics in the coming years.

Nvidia also explains that two of its technologies are absolutely essential to achieve all this: DLSS 3 (AI-based image scaling without loss of performance) and Shader Execution Reordering (ray tracing to increase efficiency without loss of quality). “DLSS allows games to render one-eighth of a pixel, and then uses artificial intelligence and GeForce RTX Tensor Cores to restore the rest, dramatically increasing frame rates and delivering sharp, high-quality images that match native resolution,” Nvidia said in a statement. announcement.

Of course, it will be a long time before this technology becomes available to the general public, but Nvidia has released a new developer SDK to prepare for it. Those with a compatible Nvidia GPU will be able to test this Overdrive mode in Cyberpunk 2077 starting April 11th.