You’ll only get ray-traced graphics in Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone’s pre-match lobbies

While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 did launch with support for upscalers like DLSS 3 and XeSS, it does not feature ray-tracing. That will change with a patch this week, bringing ray-traced graphics to the game, but there's a catch – ray-tracing will only be shown in the pre-game lobby and not during actual gameplay. 

Nvidia stated that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone will receive an option to enable ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS 3.5 with ray reconstruction in the pre-game lobby. So, unless Nvidia miswrote the announcement, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III won't have DLSS 3 (campaign-only) or ray tracing support during actual multiplayer gameplay.

Unfortunately, the announcement doesn't explain the reason behind this decision, after all, who would bother switching on ray tracing just for the pre-game lobby? However, it is worth noting that by doing it this way, Activision can avoid complaints about RT performance issues during matches and also continue to use the pre-game lobby as a vehicle for advertising in-game skins. In all, not a great use or implementation of the technology.

Something similar happened with Armoured Core 6, which also received ray tracing support but only for the game's garage. There were no ray tracing effects during actual gameplay, rendering them essentially meaningless. We also saw this with Forza Horizon 5, which only had ray-tracing effects in the car viewer.

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KitGuru says: It seems odd to me that Call of Duty games are taking steps back with their PC graphics options. Modern Warfare 2019 offered RT Shadows during the campaign, only for RT effects to be removed in MW2. Now, RT is back in MW3, but given the restrictions on when RT can be enabled, it feels pretty pointless. 

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