Blizzard has just released Title Update 1.3.5 for Diablo 4 which adds official support for Ray Tracing. To be more precise, Blizzard has used Ray Tracing in order to enhance the game’s shadows and reflections.
Going into more details, Ray Tracing will make Sun Shadows look more realistic and lifelike. For instance, the further you look from the base of an object, the softer the shadows will become.
Similarly, the RT reflections will help provide more lifelike instances. Thus, players will view pieces of the environment that were previously unseen. Not only that, but we won’t be getting the visual artifacts that screen-space reflections had in the game.
Blizzard has also shared the PC requirements for this RT Update. According to the team, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with DLSS Super Resolution will be able to run the game at 1080p/Low Settings with 30fps. To hit 1080p/High Settings/60fps, you’ll need an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 with DLSS Super Resolution. Finally, for 4K/Ultra with 60fps, Blizzard recommends using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 with DLSS Frame Generation.
Michael Bukowski, Diablo IV Technical Director, said:
“The launch of Diablo IV was just the beginning for us. We are regularly iterating based on player feedback and exploring how we can enhance the visuals and dark atmosphere of the game. The addition of ray-traced effects is our next step in making the brutal world of Sanctuary feel more immersive than ever. Effects like lightning strikes are now reflected in pools of blood and water, dank cellars and dungeons are more foreboding with realistic soft shadows, and the open world and towns are more grounded with additional realistic shadows and reflections. We are very excited for our community to experience this new technology.”
Kevin Todisco, Diablo IV Principal Software Engineer, also added:
“It was great working closely with NVIDIA to bring raytracing to Diablo IV. The experience they have with ray tracing technologies was instrumental in helping us take our ray tracing implementation to production quality, and libraries they offer like RTXMU gave us a valuable boost as we were developing.”
What’s also important to note is that Blizzard will also improve the game’s graphics even for those that don’t use Ray Tracing. This patch will offer a better Ambient Occlusion implementation. Plus, it will allow almost all objects and characters to cast dynamic shadows.
Like always, Battlenet will download this patch the next time you launch its client. You can also find here its full patch notes.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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From all the Ray Tracing effects in games i love reflections the most.
On a side note; why do devs still hang in 60fps when they recommend system req. ?
120fps fluid motion is the Way..
Yeah reflections are the best use of RT when the base game isn’t RT global illumination. Otherwise you just get what looks like a hack (AO). Some areas too dark, some too bright and not worth the trouble.
The only game I cared about RTGI was Witcher 3 and that’s cus torches make the dark bearable and add immersion and the game never looks the same anyways due to weather/time of day. It still has issues though cus it was never designed to use GI. Light leaks through cracks etc.
Looking forward to truly RT/PT’d titles that are designed from the ground up for RT/PT. Today it’s just slapped onto a raster render pipeline and fully expect we will only se hybrid approaches for quite a while.
I guess in 20-25 years the mainstream will have okish enough HW for the dev’s to start considering making games for RT/PT first, thats unless some real breakthrough happens along the way… and there are some darn clever peeps working on that.
5 years in and RT still a broken gimmick 😩
The Good. The new AO and shadows, contact shadows are the star here, don’t require RT, perform great and the game seems to use less VRAM than it did in the past.
The Bad. RT introduces microstutter on both my 4000 series GPU’s. It’s noticeable and it drove me crazy. Maybe if you play at like 60 FPS it wouldn’t be really bad. Shadows weren’t worth it at all, reflections looked awesome in the swamp zone when I did massive pulls and all the mobs were reflected in the pools of water. I also didn’t see much visual difference between the lower and higher RT reflection setting. Both seemed fine. Maybe it’s because I was playing with DLAA and not DLSS and upscaled reflections.
Hopefully they can get the stutter fixed before season 4 when the game might actually be worth playing. Reflections seem worth it if they do.
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