Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode Preview Coming on April 11th with Update 1.62

At the Game Developers Conference 2023, CD Projekt RED announced (via Reddit) that the Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode will debut via a technology preview on April 11th, which will mark the release date of Update 1.62.

The news came from the GDC 2023 session "Cyberpunk 2077' RT: Overdrive – Bringing Path Tracing into the Night City (Presented by NVIDIA)", which took place earlier today at San Francisco's Moscone Center, on the GDC Partner Stage, Expo Floor, North Hall. There's no information or media from the session yet, but here's the description:

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.

CD Projekt RED and NVIDIA first announced Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode last September during the Ada Lovelace GeForce RTX 40 Series unveiling. This update will introduce path-traced features such as:

• NVIDIA RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI) gives each neon sign, street lamp, car headlight, LED billboard, and TV accurate ray-traced lighting and shadows, bathing objects, walls, passing cars, and pedestrians in accurate colored lighting;
• Ray-traced indirect lighting and reflections now bounce multiple times, compared to the previous solution’s single bounce. The result is even more accurate, realistic and immersive global illumination, reflections, and self-reflections;
• Ray-traced reflections are now rendered at full resolution, further improving their quality;
• Improved, more physically-based lighting removes the need for any other occlusion techniques.

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Mode will undoubtedly be very taxing, even on high-end PCs. However, the game was recently updated with NVIDIA DLSS 3 (Frame Generation) support, which provides a healthy performance boost over the previous DLSS 2 (Super Resolution) implementation.

Additionally, as part of the upcoming update, the game will receive support for Shader Execution Ordering, or SER, which aims to improve the efficiency of ray traced operations. In Cyberpunk 2077, SER can speed up GPU time by around 42%, according to NVIDIA.

Other than the addition of the aforementioned path-traced features, we don't know yet what tweaks will be introduced with Patch 1.62. Later this year, though, CD Projekt RED promised to release improvements to systems like police/wanted level and vehicle combat. Moreover, Cyberpunk 2077 will get its Phantom Liberty expansion, which the developer described as the most expensive it ever made in terms of budget. Phantom Liberty will add a new district to the game, Dogtown; its story will revolve around a brand new character, veteran USA agent Reed (played by Idris Elba), who'll ask V to participate in an incredibly difficult espionage mission.

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