When I came back Cyberpunk 2077 latelyone of the most enjoyable parts of the experience was the way a two-year hiatus had presented itself Me with a game that looked and worked Away better than at launch.
Two years of driver updates and DLSS wizardry meant the game I was playing in early 2023 looked nearly like a next-gen sequel to the choppy, sluggish I was trudging through in late 2020. and tThat’s a leap I feel like some of us about to revisit because Nvidia’s new “Overdrive” mode is coming out next week and it looks hot as hell.
This is how the company describes it:
A new one on April 11th Cyberpunk 2077 Update will hit the road and will include the technology preview of Ray Tracing: Overdrive mode, which improves the game’s already amazing visuals with full ray tracing, aka path tracing.
Full ray tracing accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene. It’s used by visual effects artists to create film and television graphics that are indistinguishable from reality, but until the advent of GeForce RTX GPUs with RT cores and the AI-assisted acceleration of NVIDIA DLSS, it was real-time -Video game full ray tracing impossible as it is extremely GPU intensive.
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The point, of course, is that if you buy an expensive 40 series Nvidia graphics card in 2023, this technology is no longer impossible. It means that “every neon sign, street lamp, LED billboard, car headlight, and other light source is now ray-traced, bathing objects, walls, passing cars, and pedestrians in precise light,” with global illumination “Virtually all light sources now cast physically correct soft shadows, a feat previously unthinkable with previous approaches. Players will experience enhanced shadowing with better depth, detail, and realism.”
This is how it looks in action:
Of course, this visual level is not for me. I’m just a man with a 2070 Super who sees this as a beautiful but also expensive game that I might enjoy one day in the distant future. Like when I got a new PC in 2015 and was finally able to crank the 2008 mirror edge up to the maximum quality.
If you have a 40-series Nvidia card or are getting one soon, this update will be released on November 11th.