According to Nvidia’s official data, the RTX 4090 runs in Cyberpunk 2077’s panoramic ray tracing mode demo at a frame rate as low as 16fps without DLSS3, and up to over 100 fps with it on.
According to NVIDIA, panoramic ray tracing can accurately simulate the light properties in the whole scene. Visual effects artists have used the technology to create incredibly realistic film and television images, but before the introduction of GeForce RTX GPUs with RT Core and AI-powered NVIDIA DLSS acceleration technology, it was impossible to achieve real-time video game path tracking because of the extreme demand on GPU computing power.
Previous technologies addressed ray tracing shadows, reflections, and global illumination for a small percentage of light sources, respectively. Panoramic ray tracing can model the light properties of almost any number of self-luminous light sources, creating physically correct shadows, reflections, and global illumination on all objects. Now, Cyberpunk 2077’s panoramic ray tracing mode provides insight into the future of panoramic ray tracing technology. NVIDIA announced that it will continue to work with CD PROJEKT RED to further enhance the panoramic ray tracing technology and optimize performance.
In terms of effects, every neon sign, streetlight, LED billboard, car headlight and another light source in Cyberpunk 2077’s panoramic ray tracing mode will now appear ray-traced so that objects, walls, passing cars and pedestrians are bathed in an accurate light. With panoramic ray tracing and RTXDI, virtually any light source now casts physically accurate, soft shadows that were unimaginable using previous methods. Players will experience shadows that are perfectly rendered at every pixel, and that are more three-dimensional, detailed, and realistic.
