Even though Rockstar has not added any real-time ray tracing effects, PC gamers can still get a taste of Ray Tracing effects. And, as you may have guessed, this is possible thanks to Pascal Gilcher’s Reshade. In case you weren’t aware of, this post-process solution can improve a game’s Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion effects. Therefore, you can find below a video showcasing this mod in action.
As we’ve said numerous times, this RT solution is not similar to the native one that NVIDIA implements in other games. Technically speaking, yes; this is still real-time ray tracing. However, there are some limitations to this ray tracing/path tracing Global Illumination solution. Given its post-process nature, the Reshade is only using depth information available in screen space in order to provide these “path tracing” effects. Furthermore, the Reshade does not know the light direction which may lead to some “inaccurate” effects.
Do note that Red Dead Redemption 2 is already a GPU-heavy title. Thus, I don’t know whether it’s possible to play this game with this Reshade Ray Tracing mod, even at 1080p. Still, it will give you a glimpse at what a ray traced version of RDR2 could look like.
As we can see, there are some visual differences between the non-RT and the Reshade RT versions. There is also noticeable light bounce and better ambient occlusion effects. However, the performance hit appears to be really big. Digital Dreams has not included any framerate numbers or overlay programs. However, you can easily notice how choppy the game is when the Reshade Ray Tracing mod is active.
Again, this is mostly for experimental purposes and nothing more. Some will find it mediocre and pointless, while others will find it interesting.
Enjoy!
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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