Nvidia and CD Projekt Red discuss the current and future of PC gaming

It’s no secret that PC games continue to evolve, and more developers focus on their platform of choice and technological advancements, allowing them to make games at a level that they could see and run 10 years ago.

With that in mind, IGN sat down with NVIDIA and CD Projekt Red to chat about the current PC gaming status, the games that best showcase the latest technological advancements and the challenges and opportunities that can help define the future of PC gaming.

NVIDIA launched a number of advancements earlier this year, from the launch of DLSS 4 and its GEFORCE RTX 50 series hardware and the use of AI-powered rendering to enhance visual effects and improve performance. It provides improved image quality, overcomes the limitations of the anti-substrate fluid, and its ray reconstruction uses AI to reduce the noise of ray tracing.

It also adds improved framework generation and multi-frame generation, enabling previously impossible performance and graphics capabilities. They overcome the CPU bottleneck and make the path tracked at speeds of over 200 fps.

“Frame generation uses AI to generate the entire frame based on the data of the game itself,” said Jacob Freeman, a Geforce Evangelist. “We introduced DLSS 3, which produces an extra frame. For DLSS 4, it produces three extra frames. So your gameplay is smoother and performs better.”

Lighting is probably the area of ​​the biggest progress in recent years, first with the spread of ray tracing. DLSS 4 allows developers to take advantage of path tracing, which can be used to create sensible 3D environments with dynamic light and shadows, reflections, and refractions.

“(Path Tracking) isn't necessarily a new technology. I mean, it's been in CG for a long time,” Freeman said. “But until recently, this was basically impossible for real-time graphics. It's too computationally intensive. Basically, DLSS helps us deliver the visuals of path tracking at full 60 fps.”

Path tracking enhances lighting throughout the computer, taking the quality of ray tracing lighting to the next level, reflecting other details and game elements on the surface. It provides more realistic lighting, with light bounced from multiple surfaces, creating a more detailed and diverse environment. One of the benchmark implementations of path tracing is the Phantom Free Expansion of Cyberpunk 2077.

“I do need to say with great pride that we are one of the leaders in tracking paths, and we have worked with Nvidia for many years,” said Jakub Knapik, vice president/global art director at CD Projekt Red. “We started with tracking in the base game of Ray. The decision to release path tracking was actually triggered by the fact that DLSS was able to have its capabilities. Despite our release of Phantom Liberty, it was more or less alike while DLSS evolved.”

CD Projekt Red continues to work closely with NVIDIA to implement more improvements, and Cyberpunk 2077 added support for DLSS 4 in January and made multiple frames in January. It works with DLSS super resolution and DLSS ray reconstruction, multiplying the GEFORCE RTX 50 series GPU by 9.2x at 4K at 4K, and has fully ray tracing RT overspeed mode enabled, with all settings maximizing.

“With all these features (DLS 4), we can do path tracing in 4K in the way Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty,” Knapik said. “When you're just working on this framework, it took 24 hours to render a frame that you tracked in a movie 10 years ago. One framework. Now, we're rendering 240 frames at 4K to play the game. Obviously, we use a lot of tricks, but when you flip your mind to math, it's a breakthrough.”

While Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of the technology implementation, there are many other outstanding games that showcase the possibilities of DLSS 4 and Path Tracing.

Doom: Dark Ages frame rate multiplied by 4K on GEFORCE RTX 50 series GPUs using multi-frame generation DLSS 4 times multiplied by 4K at 4K. Generation of DLSS frameworks has doubled its performance on GEFORCE RTX 40 series GPUs, and AI model of Transforter using DLSS Super Super Solutions improves image quality and frame rate on all GEFORCE RTX GPUs. Path tracking can also enhance light sources such as lights, torches and Doomsday Killer’s weapons. These emitted elements now illuminate the surrounding details more realistically and dynamically illuminate the corridors as the glowing light hits the shiny mirror.

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle are also enhanced with DLSS super resolution, ray reconstruction and path tracking. Using DLSS 4 generated with multi-frames, it can achieve previously unavailable frame rates on RTX 50 series graphics cards. With path tracking, shadows, reflections and global lighting can all be rendered accurately, thus improving image quality.

Remedy Entertainment's FBC: FireBreaks has a complete RTX technology suite developed for Alan Wake 2 (also from Remedy). FBC: Firebreak is a three-player FPS that shows that DLSS improvements can be implemented in various genres. Illumination reflections, shadows, and ambient blockages all enhance with path tracking. This improves the unpredictable and extradition headquarters of the Federal Control Agency, including transparent and opaque reflections to accurately reflect its surroundings with full resolution, enhanced immersion.

Developer S-Game's upcoming action RPG Phantom Blade Zero is committed to launching one-to-one support for DLSS 4 and is released with Ray Tracing.

Speaking of future titles, Freeman and Napique discuss where the industry is heading and the challenges to be addressed next. They both mentioned that hair is a focus area, especially its response to light and the way it looks and acts more realistically.

“There are more advanced ray tracing that can still be done. For example, we recently talked about a new feature called RTX Hair, which is a more accurate way to indicate light interacts with hair,” Freeman said. “With RTX Hair, it uses a new feature in the RTX 50 series called Linear Sweep Ball, which is a different way to actually present hair chains. It’s a more efficient way to present hair chains that better interact with the lighting of path-tracking. Allowing you to use more realistic hair when you use more realistic hair, you can use Path tak tar treac tracing tracing tracing.”

Freeman also mentioned that neural rendering is the wave of the future. The launch of the NVIDIA RTX suite started earlier this year, a suite of neural rendering techniques used to use AI for ray tracing, render scenes in huge geometric shapes, and create more lifelike characters. It enhances geometry, textures, materials and lighting, providing greater visual fidelity and performance to the complex open world while reducing artifacts, instability and VRAM usage.

While next-generation technologies such as DLSS and Path Tracing are becoming more standard in gaming, NVIDIA experts and developers at CD Projekt Red and other leading studios have been constantly pushing to find new ways to leverage technology to improve graphics and performance, providing the best experience for PC gamers.

“There is definitely a lot more to go through lighting, path tracking, ray tracing, we still have to explore,” Freeman said. “There is always a place to go.”