Wolfenstein: Youngblood – Real-time Ray Tracing versus Vanilla/Console video comparison [UPDATE]


Yesterday, NVIDIA and Bethesda announced that Wolfenstein: Youngblood will support real-time ray tracing effects. Although the publisher did not reveal the effects for which ray tracing will be used, it released a new trailer that featured scenes with ray tracing enabled.

Now the good news here is that some scenes were identical to those featured in the previous non-ray tracing trailers, thus giving us an idea of what NVIDIA’s RTX will bring to the table. As such, YouTube’s Cycu1 has made a comparison video between all the similar scenes that were featured in the ray tracing and non-ray tracing trailers of Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

As we can see, the lighting seems to be more “realistic” in the ray tracing version, with noticeable reflections and light bounces on various characters. From the looks of it, the shadows have not been improved and I’m not sure if ray tracing has been used for ambient occlusion/global illumination.

Here is hoping that NVIDIA and MachineGames will reveal more details about the ray tracing effects in the coming weeks. Until then, and based on what we’re seeing here, ray tracing has been used in order to improve the reflections of the game (similar to what we saw in Battlefield 5).

Enjoy!

Wolfenstein Youngblood Story Trailer vs RTX Bundle Trailer Early Graphics Comparison

UPDATE:

Cycu1 got in touch with us and clarified some things. As he told us, NVIDIA’s representatives reached out to him and clarified that the gameplay showed in the RTX trailer was not using any real-time ray tracing effects. As such, the minor visual differences we spotted could be between two different builds for the game. Moreover, NVIDIA plans to release a new trailer that will showcase the ray tracing effects soon.