DICE’s latest iteration in the Battlefield franchise builds on the tradition of bringing spectacular visuals and dynamic environments. More so, in the case of Battlefield V. The game is built to support NVIDIA’s latest Ray Tracing technology hardware, coupled with Microsoft’s DXR API.

The first deployment of real-time ray tracing in games came with huge performance impact. A single RTX 2080 Ti struggles to hold 60fps at 1080p. But that’s about to change as we move closer to Battlefield V’s upcoming update.

NVIDIA is promising huge improvements to DXR performance in the game. Releasing on December 4, Battlefield V: Tides of War Chapter 1: Overture update is set to bring up to 50% performance up lift.

In the video that accompanied the announcement, DICE explained how its post-launch optimizations for ray tracing translated to significant performance gains.

 

A single RTX 2080 Ti is now able to hit 60fps at 1440p with DXR quality set to Ultra. The RTX 2080 shares similar results, it can now push 60fps at 1440p with DXR quality at Medium. And the RTX 2070 is not far behind, it’s now capable of 60fps gameplay at 1080p with DXR quality set to Medium.

How did DICE pull it off? The developers explain that nothing in quality was dumbed down in order to improve performance. Instead, DICE looked at the implementation.

“What we do is we increase the amount of rays we shoot in the scene as you go from Low to Ultra.”

DICE worked with NVIDIA to fix a performance-breaking bug in the game. Battlefield V features destructible environments, something that has been a hallmark of the franchise. The said bug caused significant performance drop when there’s destruction on screen. The end result? Almost double the performance regardless of what you blow up in the game.

The dawn of any new technology brings uncharted territories that developers explore with time. NVIDIA is pushing ray tracing heavily as the next big visual effect for gaming. What’s clear is that optimizations have a huge impact on ray tracing performance, and developers have only just begun to see what can be improved.

 

Author: Jawwad Iqbal

Having written on tech for years now, Jawwad Iqbal took his passion for sharing news and opinions with the inception of Hardware Blitz. He holds a firm view that quality content drives long-term success.