Wednesday, November 23rd 2022
The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update Adds Higher-res Textures, Ray Traced GI, DLSS and FSR 2
CD Projekt RED announced an unexpected content update for the now-7 year old "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," an immensely popular AAA game that continues to be a favorite among GPU reviewers and PC enthusiasts. The content update, dubbed simply "Next Gen Update," is expected to go live on December 14, 2022. The free update adds several visual enhancements that would normally be marketed as a "Remastered" title, and sold separately.
To begin with, CDPR has increased texture resolutions, and redesigned the foliage to be more realistic. It gets new real-time ray traced global illumination (RT-GI), which should significantly improve the lighting throughout the game. The game also gets super-sampling performance enhancements, namely NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2. Thanks to the higher-resolution assets and RT-GI, the graphics settings now include a new preset called "Ultra+," which maxes out everything, including the new assets. The game's UI now offers more camera perspectives. For next-generation consoles, the update adds a new "Performance" mode that runs it at 60 FPS, and a new "Quality" mode that enables RT-GI along with FSR 2.The trailer for the new content update follows.
To begin with, CDPR has increased texture resolutions, and redesigned the foliage to be more realistic. It gets new real-time ray traced global illumination (RT-GI), which should significantly improve the lighting throughout the game. The game also gets super-sampling performance enhancements, namely NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR 2. Thanks to the higher-resolution assets and RT-GI, the graphics settings now include a new preset called "Ultra+," which maxes out everything, including the new assets. The game's UI now offers more camera perspectives. For next-generation consoles, the update adds a new "Performance" mode that runs it at 60 FPS, and a new "Quality" mode that enables RT-GI along with FSR 2.The trailer for the new content update follows.
138 Comments on The Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update Adds Higher-res Textures, Ray Traced GI, DLSS and FSR 2
I haven't read the books yet but I loved the storytelling of the first game, how it's all connected and leading towards the end. The combat system was pretty awkward but it only takes a moment to get a hang on it. That's not entirely fair, CDPR played a big part on hyping "GTA: Night City" and the game was barely playable on both PS4 and Xbox One - so bad it was removed from the platforms, not just the usual "muh uh it runs bad!". They knew how bad it was and tried to hide it with all demos specifically done on PC, but for whatever reason had to release it like that (contracts, shareholders, whatever), but it was crap. It's not even like it was a cross generation title, it was purely developed for the PS4/Xbox one generations.
There's not living up to the hype - sad but to be expected with something so hyped, and there's the worst release quality in recent history, this unfortunately was both.
Plus, you don't play the series for the combat, you play it for the story.
Books, I haven't gone through all of them yet. They're like the Netflix series, seemingly unrelated stories until you realize it's the same story, just told in out-of-order fashion. Great overall, imho, but the out-of-order will surely phase some.
Hype is a strange thing - on the one hand, you have material coming from the media and the studios themselves. On the other hand, you form your own preconceived notions of the final product that may or may not have a correlation to the media material presented to you. Maybe you see a car chase scene in one of the trailers and conclude that the whole game is going to be about car chases. In reality, that car chase might be one single scene from the game. Or just an animated sequence that never gets featured to get you into the atmosphere of the game. What I'm trying to say is that hype isn't just about what you see, but it's more about what you think of it. CDPR isn't more responsible for the hype around Cyberpunk 2077 than Nvidia is for the hype around the GeForce and RTX brands. It's always up to the end user to decide whether something is worth hyping, or whether it should be taken with a pinch of salt. Personally, I never give any media material any credit until I see the final game with my own eyes.
B: What will it do?
A: Guaranteed to tank your FPS
B: Oh :)
Fun fact: Epic lumen (here is the demo if you missed it) runs slower with "hardware RT" enabled.
Some things about "hardware acceleration" are hard to comprehend... :D
Also can a 10gig 3080 handle the improved textures?
I still think that 10 GB will be fine for this game and at worst, it's probable that just lowering a settings will do the trick (and it's quite possible the visual loss wouldn't be perceptible). We are still not sure what exactly they aim, but with the new gen of cards, 10+ gb cards will become more numerous. There are a lot of 12, 16 GB and 24 GB cards around and at some point, Devs will want to utilize that with ultra settings.
I for one welcome this free update.
Here's a (very) high level overview: developer.nvidia.com/rtx/ray-tracing/rtxgi
Keep in mind GI is just one aspect of ray tracing though: developer.nvidia.com/rtx/ray-tracing
The next Witcher 3 update today, I am playing it, but the camera angle is really weird, its more zoomed in Mass Effect style, I do not like it, is there anyway to go back to the old camera style while keeping the next gen update?
Fix the searches already.
Anyways, be a while before i try it, kinda pointless on my current card.