Battlefield 5 may support real-time ray tracing via NVIDIA’s RTX technology


So far, we know that Metro Exodus will be among the first new titles that will support real-time ray tracing. And while there are hints that Final Fantasy XV may also support it via Vulkan, PCGamesHardware has discovered a clear indication of Battlefield 5 supporting real-time ray tracing.

PCGamesHardware used this console command in the alpha version of Battlefield 5: “Render.DrawScreenInfo 1”. This command displays at the top an overview of all the necessary technical details when running Battlefield 5 and at the end of it, we can clearly see the reference to “Raytrace.”

DICE has not officially announced anything about supporting real-time ray tracing in Battlefield 5, though we wouldn’t be surprised if NVIDIA announces this new feature during its upcoming pre-Gamescom 2018 event.

Battlefield 5 will be powered by the latest version of the Frostbite Engine and all the previous BF games worked great in DX11. However, Raytrace requires DX12 or Vulkan and that renderer was significantly slower in all previous Battlefield games. As such, we are really looking forward to see whether DICE has optimized DX12 so it can be as fast as DX11, and whether these real-time ray tracing effects will be worth the additional performance hit.

Stay tuned for more!