The Horizon Forbidden West PC port is virtually bursting on the seams with PC graphical goodies, together with decision upscalers and body technology tech, in addition to extra mundane however welcome bonuses over the unique PlayStation 5 model, similar to unlocked body charges and ultrawide monitor assist. Nevertheless, there isn’t a touch of ray tracing, and that’s all all the way down to quite a lot of inventive and technical challenges, in response to its builders.
Early experiences following the launch of Horizon Forbidden West on PC counsel you gained’t want the very best graphics card to play it, however these with highly effective pixel pushers will naturally discover themselves extra comfy. In the meantime, the sport is proving a feast for the eyes, even with out ray tracing, and that’s partly the rationale for its omission.
Talking with Digital Foundry, Michiel Roza, principal optimization programmer at Nixxes Software program, reveals that ray tracing was “thought-about” for Horizon Forbidden West on PC. Nevertheless, including it to the sport could be no easy activity, with a course of that’s fraught with difficulties.
“For this challenge, with the hours of cinematics and the scope… we determined that the sport already seems to be actually good, there’s a robust route right here and we actually didn’t need to mess with it,” Roza explains. Nixxes are to be counseled for eager to respect inventive intent, given how simply ray tracing can spoil a sport’s visuals if it’s improperly carried out, as demonstrated by early-stage RTX Remix mods.
Making issues worse, including ray tracing to Horizon Forbidden West creates huge technical challenges in response to Jeroen Krebbers, lead tech programmer at Guerilla Video games. They clarify that the majority of Forbidden West “is basically laborious to ray hint towards, even for shadows”, owing to the properties of a lot of the sport’s supplies, similar to timber.
Mix this with an estimated “100 sq. kilometers of content material” in response to Krebbers, and it’s laborious to not be intimidated by the scope of the work that will be required so as to add ray tracing to the sport.
Nevertheless, Krebbers does make clear that Guerilla Video games “actually likes the tech”, following up with an intriguing assertion of “watch this house.” Fingers crossed, we might see ray tracing make its solution to Horizon Forbidden West as a part of a future replace or sequel.
You’ll be able to learn the complete interview over on Eurogamer, and I extremely suggest doing in order there’s some fascinating behind-the-scenes speak concerning the Horizon Forbidden West PC port.
Earlier than becoming a member of Aloy on her newly ported journey, you should definitely try the Horizon Forbidden West system necessities to ensure your PC is as much as working the sport. We’ve additionally obtained the most recent phrase on Horizon Forbidden West Steam Deck compatibility, for these of you hoping to play on the go.
