An upcoming tech preview for CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 will show us the power of path-tracing. Move over ray- tracing, there is a new kid on Cyberpunk’s block.
Path-tracing, which is also known as full ray-tracing, has been used in computer-generated imagery for films and TV for a while now, with notable examples including some Pixar animations. It “accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene”, making things even more realistic.
Now, this tech is coming to Cyberpunk 2077 on 11th April, in the game’s Ray-tracing: Overdrive Mode.
Nvidia has described it as a “sneak peek into the future of full ray-tracing”, possible thanks to CDPR’s use of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology which “allows games to render an eighth of the pixels, then uses AI and GeForce RTX Tensor Cores to reconstruct the rest, dramatically multiplying frame rates, while delivering crisp, high-quality images that rival native resolution”.