NVIDIA and CD Projekt Red are finally ready to debut the new Ray-Tracing: Overdrive Mode for Cyberpunk 2077, and the results are stunning to say the least. The new mode introduces full ray-traced lighting for the already demanding game, replacing the existing lighting and RT effects with what's called path tracing.

For the more technical nerds out there that means ray-tracing for global illumination, direct and indirect lighting, shadows, ambient occlusion, and full-resolution ray-traced reflections. It's a remarkable feat that makes full use of technology like DLSS 3 and Frame Generation for the GeForce RTX 40 Series of GPUs. Plus NVIDIA has worked alongside CDPR to leverage all new pipelines and techniques that have been developed to improve performance and make RT at this level in games possible.

Check it out.

Full ray tracing accurately simulates light throughout an entire scene. It is 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 full ray tracing was impossible because it's extremely GPU intensive.

Previous techniques separately addressed ray-traced shadows, reflections and global illumination for a small number of light sources. Full ray tracing models the properties of light from a virtually unlimited number of emissive sources, delivering physically correct shadows, reflections and global illumination on all objects.

The technology preview for Cyberpunk 2077’s Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is a sneak peek into the future of full ray tracing, and we are working with CD PROJEKT RED on further full ray tracing enhancements, bug fixes, and performance optimizations.

NVIDIA and CDPR are calling Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode a "technology preview" with the footage we're seeing above captured with a GeForce RTX 4090. Like with Portal with RTX, you'll probably need either an RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 for this to be playable at anything higher than 1080p. No wonder NVIDIA is calling it "a sneak peek into the future" of game visuals.