Elden Ring Ray Tracing Update PC Test – Improved, But at What Cost?

wccftech.com:

Elden Ring was the most critically acclaimed game released in 2022, garnering countless awards that spanned various categories, including some related to the technical aspect of the game.

Even so, I'd be hard-pressed to consider Elden Ring some sort of a technical masterpiece. While its art is top-notch, the game doesn't include any cutting-edge technologies, and its default look is far from the most impressive game we've ever seen. On PC, there are texture mods and other user-made graphics enhancements and tweaks, but they can only go so far.

That's why I had been eagerly anticipating the ray tracing update. Bandai Namco first announced that Elden Ring would be updated with ray tracing support months before launch. Then, there were no more official news on the matter (although dataminers had spotted the addition of related strings that hinted at an imminent release) until ray tracing was at last added to Elden Ring with this week's 1.09 patch.

So, did FromSoftware manage to elevate the game's visuals to new heights? Yes and no. It's not a game-changing difference, which is hardly surprising since FromSoftware only elected to implement ray traced shadows and ambient occlusion. While it is understandable that the developers wouldn't want to go into adding ray traced global illumination since it would have required re-authoring the game's entire lighting, they could have at least added ray traced reflections, too. For that, we have the precedent of additions to an existing game and a live service one at that (Grand Theft Auto V on current-generation consoles).

Going back to Elden Ring, the impact of ray tracing (set to max on PC) varies between scenes, which is why I've captured several, both indoors and outdoors, near the