Ray tracing is improved with Nvidia’s DLSS 3.5, and it’s cruising to Cyberpunk 2077 this week
By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
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Cyberpunk 2077 will become the first game to support Nvidia DLSS 3.5, the latest version of the chipmaker’s upscaling technology. The update will arrive on September 21st with Update 2.0 — just days before the launch of the game’s Phantom Liberty expansion.
DLSS 3.5 uses a new technology called Ray Reconstruction, which Nvidia describes as an AI-powered technique that enhances the quality of ray tracing. Ray Reconstruction swaps “hand-tuned denoisers” with an AI network trained by a supercomputer that should result in higher-quality pixels between sampled rays.
Additionally, DLSS 3.5 is trained using five times more data than DLSS 3. It should also be able to identify different ray-traced effects to “make smarter decisions about using temporal and spatial data” to allow for higher-quality upscaling.
In Cyberpunk 2077’s case, that translates to improvements to the quality and clarity of reflections, more accurate global illumination, and better lighting. Along with better ray-tracing, the game’s Update 2.0 will also add vehicle combat and car chases, a “revamped” police system, and redesigned perk and skill trees. When Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty comes out on September 26th, it will also support Nvidia DLSS 3.5.
Crucially, while DLSS 3 was limited to RTX 40-series graphics cards, DLSS 3.5 will be available to all RTX GPUs. That means you’ll see these benefits even on a five-year-old RTX 2080. Other games, including Portal with RTX, Alan Wake 2, and Half-Life 2
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