Cyberpunk 2077 To Showcase Truly Next-Gen RTX Path Tracing as part of RT: Overdrive Mode in GDC Presentation

NVIDIA is all set to implement the next generation of RTX Path Tracing within Cyberpunk 2077 as part of the upcoming RT: Overdrive mode.

NVIDIA To Present Cyberpunk 2077 RTX Path Tracing Demo At GDC 2023

In a session listed by NVIDIA, the company will be presenting the first real-time RTX Path Tracing demo within Cyberpunk 2077. The session titled “Cyberpunk 2077′ RT: Overdrive – Bringing Path Tracing into the Night City (Presented by NVIDIA)” will include NVIDIA’s Senior Developer & Technology Engineer, Pawel Kozlowski, along with CD Projekt Red’s Global Art Director, Jakub Knapik. The session will take place on the 22nd of March and the description has the following say:

CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 is technically one of the most challenging games on the market thanks to its massive world scale and visual variety. Its neon-illuminated environments and vast Night City vistas are already pushing the envelope of what’s currently possible in real-time graphics. RT: Overdrive mode aims to take it to the next level by bringing RTX Path Tracing into the mix.

We all are well too familiar with the limitations of the current real-time direct and indirect lighting algorithms. Things like non-shadow casting lights with non-physically based range, low-resolution indirect light multiplied by screen-space ambient occlusion, or screen-space reflections are still widely used. While delivering satisfying performance on lower-end hardware, they limit maximum image quality and reduce content creator flexibility.

RTX Path Tracing aims to minimize constraints put on the content creators by delivering pixel-perfect soft shadows and indirect light contribution in fully dynamic environments from all the lights – be it an analytical local light, emissive surface, skylight, you name it.

Join our session to find out how the new unified lighting pipeline created by the core algorithms of RTX Path Tracing, can improve the game’s image fidelity while simplifying the direct and indirect lighting pipeline simultaneously.

Welcome to the Future! via GDC

Cyberpunk 2077 is a graphical marvel, although the game was riddled with bugs at launch, the team at CD Projekt Red did an absolutely wonderful job at gaining the trust of its followers & the gaming community after putting in the love that this next-gen title deserved. The game even won the Labor of Love award on Steam as voted by the fans.

It is still one of the biggest graphical hogs out there, requiring the best of the best hardware to run smoothly while showcasing its maximum graphical potential. The good thing is that the game includes DLSS 2/3 and FSR2.1 technologies that allow for a better frame rate with the existing ray tracing technologies.

NVIDIA was the first to introduce real-time raytracing to the gaming world back in 2018 and the tech, too, had a very rocky start, but almost every major AAA release these days incorporates the technology, even consoles. Path Tracing seems to be the next logical step for NVIDIA and GPUs.

Path Tracing is on a whole different level as demonstrated in the Portal RTX & Quake RTX. With RT: Overdrive, Cyberpunk 2077 is getting RTX Direct Illumination, multi-bounce RTX indirect lighting and reflections, and full-resolution ray traced reflections. Hopefully, the imminent GDC 2023 presentation means the update is coming soon to the live game.

Meanwhile, Cyberpunk 2077 fans will have the chance to improve the texture quality thanks to the imminent release of Halk Hogan’s HD Reworked Project, set for this Sunday.

News Source: CapFrameX