Cyberpunk 2077 has been back in the news again recently for a number of reasons. CD Projekt Red is currently working on its new Phantom Liberty expansion and alongside this Miles Tost, Acting Lead Level Designer at CD Projekt Red also spoke at GDC stating that CD Projekt Red “need to treat paths as special” in the company’s future projects. However, Cyberpunk is eying up a release of one of the game’s most demanding features on April 11th, 2023. Overdrive Mode is set to make its way to Cyberpunk 2077 in April which is set to add path-tracing to the game. path-tracing, also known as full ray-tracing provides more realistic lighting to the overall world of Cyberpunk 2077. If you haven’t heard of the feature before it’s probably because most games hardly use it due to the demand it puts on GPUs. NVIDIA notes:
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. But until the arrival of GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Cores, and the AI-powered acceleration of NVIDIA DLSS, real-time video game path tracing was impossible because it is extremely GPU intensive.
NVIDIA
Speaking on the addition to Cyberpunk 2077 Pawl Kozlowski, a senior technology developer engineer at NVIDIA said that path-tracing not only makes a game look better but also has the potential to “revolutionize the entire pipeline of how games are being created.”
Cyberpunk 2077 continues to draw in new players after a rough start when it was initially released on December 9th, 2020. Recent improvements to the game’s performance and CD Projekt Red’s push on a transmedia approach to the Cyberpunk franchise including the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix have certainly paid off as many players are heralding the title as one of gaming’s biggest comeback stories. While the addition of path-tracing is certainly going to be a feature that few players avail of given its technical demands its mere addition shows CD Projekt Red’s continued commitment to Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of its Phantom Liberty expansion which is set to release at some point later in 2023.
Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. If you’ve returned to Cyberpunk 2077 and are looking for some more games to scratch your Cyberpunk itch why not check out our list of the ‘11 Best Cyberpunk PC Games You Should Be Playing In 2022′
Source: How Cyberpunk 2077 Achieved Photorealistic Graphics with NVIDIA’s Tools
