Cyberpunk 2077 by CD PROJEKT RED is already one of the most technologically advanced games out there. It uses ray tracing to make its neon-lit environments and huge Night City look incredibly realistic.
On April 11, a new Cyberpunk 2077 update will be released. It will include a technology preview of the Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode, which adds full ray tracing, also known as path tracing, to the game’s already amazing graphics.
With full ray tracing, light is simulated correctly in every part of a scene. Visual effects artists use it to make graphics for movies and TV that look just like real life. However, until GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Cores and the AI-powered acceleration of NVIDIA DLSS came out, full ray tracing in real-time video games was impossible because it uses a lot of GPU power.
Do you know that Rockstar Software has said they are making the next Grand Theft Auto game, which is being called GTA 6 right now? Grand Theft Auto fans already know that they have high hopes for the graphics in GTA 6. Some GTA fans think that GTA 6 will do this by copying a lot of Cyberpunk 2077:
For now, this new mode is only coming to the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077. There has been no word on when it will be added to the console versions. Still, it’s worth a quick look because, as the video above shows, it completely changes how the game looks in most scenes.
While CDPR’s current next-gen version of their cyberpunk RPG did incorporate ray tracing on Xbox Series X and PS5, it was a stripped-down implementation that focused primarily on shadows.
Will this “RT Overdrive” mode ever be available on consoles? It seems unlikely, given how much power is needed for any kind of ray tracing, but you should never say never, given how many updates this game has had.
We do know that there will be more Cyberpunk 2077 goodness coming to Xbox, though. The game’s “Phantom Liberty” expansion is coming to the Xbox Series X and S, but the developers won’t be putting out a DLC pack for the last-gen Xbox One.