Cyberpunk 2077: Ray Tracing Tech Breakthrough: Overdrive Mode Now Live and DLSS Push Continues!

Today marks the highly anticipated release of Cyberpunk 2077’s ray tracing technology breakthrough: Overdrive Mode, and GeForce RTX 40 Series owners get a boost to in-game performance thanks to the power of DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

DLSS momentum continues at a breakneck pace, with Everspace 2 and LEAP recently coming out of Early Access with DLSS 2 support, and Like a Dragon: Ishin! also got a DLSS 2 performance improvement.

Night city lights up with full ray tracing

Cyberpunk 2077 by CD PROJEKT RED is already one of the most technologically advanced games out there, using various ray tracing techniques to render a huge future city in incredible detail. Now, Cyberpunk 2077 has raised the bar again with the release of Ray Tracing’s technological breakthrough: Overdrive Mode, which introduces full ray tracing, also known as trajectory.

Cyberpunk 2077: Overdrive Mode’s Ray Tracing technology breakthrough is a preview of the future of full ray tracing, and we’re working with CD PROJEKT RED on further full ray tracing improvements, bug fixes, and performance optimizations.

Reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and more have been improved, giving you a glimpse into the future of gaming graphics. Cyberpunk 2077 uses NVIDIA DLSS 3 to multiply the performance of GeForce RTX gamers and allow them to experience the majesty of a fully ray-drawn night city.

RTX Inside the Game: CD PROJEKT RED Interview

To learn more about the new mode, we spoke with Jakub Knapik, Vice President and Global Artistic Director of CD PROJEKT RED. To read the full interview, visit our Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode article or watch this explainer video.

RTX ON: GeForce gamers embrace ray tracing and DLSS

In 2018, NVIDIA kickstarted a gaming revolution with the release of the first generation of GeForce RTX graphics cards. Since the release of the first games decades ago, lighting had been faked and various hacks employed to approximate shadows, reflections, and other real-world properties. GeForce RTX made real-time ray tracing a reality, allowing developers to realistically render reflections and lighting, making their games more immersive and fun. And with DLSS 1.0, NVIDIA invented a revolutionary way for gamers to speed up frame rates.

In 2018 there were 4 RTX games, 37% of GeForce RTX gamers enabled ray tracing and 26% enabled DLSS 1.0.

Five years later, NVIDIA introduced the 3rd generation of RTX with the release of the GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. Now, DLSS 3 doubles the performance with AI-accelerated frame generation in 30 games. DLSS 2 accelerates frame rates in over 280 games and applications with image quality as good as or better than native resolution TAA rendering. NVIDIA Reflex reduces system latency to provide a smoother, more enjoyable experience in over 70 games. And new technologies like Shader Execution Reordering (SER) and Opacity Micromaps (OMM), NVIDIA RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI), and RTX Global Illumination (RTXGI) allow developers to create incredible ray-traced effects at high frame rates and much less. effort.

Among gamers, RTX’s huge advances are well known, and the latest integrations are used by most RTX owners. Of the millions of GeForce RTX desktop GPU owners, 83% of 40-series gamers enabled ray tracing and 79% throttled performance with DLSS in RTX-compatible games.

The popularity and adoption of ray tracing and DLSS has outpaced other advances and technologies, such as 4K, used by 28% of gamers, and high refresh rate (144Hz+) gaming monitors, used by 62 % of GeForce RTX 40 Series Desktop GPU Owners.

More DLSS News

• Everspace 2 is coming out of Early Access with support for DLSS 2 (available now).

• High on Life has improved its performance with DLSS 2 (now available).

• LEAP exits Early Access with support for DLSS 2 (available now).

• Like a Dragon: Ishin! has been enhanced with DLSS 2 (now available).

With over 280 DLSS games and applications available today, it’s clear that NVIDIA DLSS is adapting at a breakneck pace. In fact, DLSS 3 is already accelerating performance in 30 published games, an adoption rate 7 times faster than DLSS 2 in the 6 months of release.