On a graphical and technological level, Cyberpunk 2077 is undoubtedly one of the most advanced games out there today. When it was launched, we shared with you a technical analysis where we had the opportunity to review its most important keys, and today the title has taken another huge leap thanks to the introduction of a patch that represents Overdrive ray tracing mode.

When we activate this mode, what we know as route tracing, a variant of ray tracing that works in a very specific way because it generates a larger number of rays that simulate the behavior of light in different scenes in a much more realistic way. In order to better understand what the «Overdrive» mode entails, it is necessary compare it directly to “Insane” mode.

When we activate ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 in “Insane” mode, a total of 10 rays are generated per pixel, and a hybrid approach is used that maintains some limitations due to performance issues. This mode works like this:

• Global and diffuse illumination generated by ray tracing is reduced to reflection, and light sources are limited.
• Reflections are generated in a hybrid waywhich combines screen space reflections and ray tracing to reduce performance impact.
• The resolution of reflections generated using ray tracing is lower than the original which we use, a very common technique that also helps improve performance.
• The physics of ray tracing lighting is severely limited so it is necessary to resort to ambient occlusion to achieve a good result in certain scenes.
• in some scenes shadows that should be present are not generated because, as I said, not all light sources are generated by ray tracing.

With ray tracing mode on “Insane” total 10 rays per pixel. On the other hand, with the «Overdrive» mode in total 22 rays per pixelwhich generates a workload equivalent to 635 ray tracing operations per pixel. This allowed CD Projekt RED to use much more realistic ray tracing and completely customize how it works with four main keys:

• Much more realistic lighting was introduced thanks to NVIDIA RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI)who does every light source in the game generates accurate and realistic lighting that directly and indirectly affects all elements of the game, and also generates more realistic shadows and scenes with accurate colors.
• Both lighting and reflections will now have multiple bounces, which will improve the accuracy, realism and quality of both effects. This will make it possible to create better quality indirect lighting that more closely matches the reality of each scene, and more accurate and realistic reflections.
• all reflections are rendered at full resolution, thanks to which they will have greater sharpness and top quality. It will continue to differentiate between surfaces, which means that the problem of specular reflections on matte surfaces will not occur and that each material will produce reflections in a manner appropriate to its particularities.
• enter lighting physics improvements, so it is no longer necessary to resort to techniques such as ambient occlusion to create realistic contact shadows where a large number of objects of different sizes coincide. This will have a very noticeable impact in various scenes, but it will be especially noticeable in the interior.

To balance the performance impact that ray tracing will have in Cyberpunk 2077’s “Overdrive” mode, we can activate DLSS 3 mode and frame generation if we have a GeForce RTX 40. And speaking of DLSS 3, NVIDIA has confirmed that this technique it is received seven times faster developers in the first six months of its life compared to DLSS 2 and that there are 30 games available at the time of writing. Here you will find a complete list of games and applications with DLSS and ray tracing support.