Boundary screenshots 1

Boundary will no longer feature Ray Tracing, ditches DLSS over FSR & XeSS


What do Atomic Heart and Boundary have in common? Well, both of them had exclusive Ray Tracing effects (and even benchmarks) that were cut from their retail versions. Yes yes, even though Surgical Scalpels showcased some really GPU-heavy RT effects for this online FPS, the game will not feature any of them at launch.

In an interview with WCCFTech, Surgical Scalpels claimed that it had to remove Ray Tracing and DLSS from the game’s Early Access version. However, and similar to Atomic Heart, we may see these RT via a post-launch update.

As Surgical Scalpels stated:

“Unfortunately, we need to remove Ray Tracing and DLSS from the EA version. The main reason is that our development resources cannot support multiple technical features, especially pure technical features, which means that this feature will not bring substantial improvements to gameplay. Therefore, we lowered the priority of this feature over the past year. After struggling for a long time, we finally decided to drop it from the launch version. This decision was not easy, as we are a team of technology-driven game developers, especially since we spent a lot of time doing ray tracing benchmarks for Boundary.”

What’s also funny is that Surgical Scalpels’ official YouTube channel still has two-three videos for the game’s Ray Tracing effects.

But anyway, let’s say that Ray Tracing needs a lot of work (even though the game already had an RT Benchmark). Why are they removing support for DLSS? I mean, the game will support Intel XeSS and AMD FSR 2.0, so a DLSS implementation should be easy.

Well, the main reason behind this decision is a partnership with AMD. Surgical Scalpels claimed that AMD has provided them with great technical and resource support.

“Both technologies (Intel XeSS and AMD FSR 2.0) will be supported in the game. And specific thanks to AMD, who very much provided us with great technical and resource support to make sure FSR 2 performs extremely well in Boundary. AMD has been a wonderful partner these last few months.”

Yes, Surgical Scalpels has not flat-out said that AMD is to be blamed. However, we can all read between the lines. And this isn’t the first time that an AMD-sponsored game ditches DLSS over FSR.

Boundary is coming to Steam Early Access on April 13th!