Cyberpunk 2077 could be set for another path tracing upgrade

This year, Cyberpunk 2077 went through another big upgrade, enabling DLSS 3 and a new RT Extreme mode, which enables full path-tracing lighting effects in the game. With the game's big expansion, Phantom Liberty, coming up, there could be another upgrade on the way, with new technology to improve path tracing performance. 

CapFrameX recently put the idea forward that Cyberpunk 2077 could be the first game to support Nvidia's Neural Radiance Cache technology. Nvidia first unveiled this feature through a research paper back in 2021.

[Rumor] CD PROJECT will support neural radiance caching for path tracing with the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 DLC. This technology can improve path tracing performance significantly. pic.twitter.com/2Yxgkjctnd

— CapFrameX (@CapFrameX) May 20, 2023

The new tech would switch away from pretraining for specific surfaces and instead switch to an adaptive model, designed to handle “fully dynamic scenes” while making “no assumptions about the lighting, geometry, and materials”. As a result, it ” sidesteps many difficulties of caching algorithms, such as locating, interpolating, and updating cache points”.

It is unclear exactly where this rumour came from, so it may be more of a prediction, as Nvidia has been working with CD Projekt Red to bring its cutting-edge tech to Cyberpunk 2077 and make it one of the most technically and visually impressive games available on PC.

CD Projekt Red will announce its release date and give us our first proper look at the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, Phantom Liberty, sometime this summer. No specific date has been announced yet but previously, CD Projekt has made big announcements as part of the Xbox Summer Showcase, so we may well get a new trailer during Xbox's show in June.

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KitGuru Says: Have many of you had the chance to try Cyberpunk 2077's path-traced lighting mode in person? 

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