After several shifts, the action role-playing game “Cyberpunk 2077 “since 10. December available. The Polish development studio CD Projekt is venturing into a new franchise after the “Witcher” series produced three successful titles.

In “Cyberpunk 2000” the in-house Red Engine is used again, however in a further developed version: CD Projekt has the 3D-API of DirectX in the PC version 11 on DirectX 12 changed. This goes hand in hand with improved processor utilization, but also with new graphics effects via DirectX Raytracing (DXR) – initially only in conjunction with GeForce RTX graphics cards. Even without ray tracing, players get delicacies such as global lighting. heise online took a closer look at the PC version of “Cyberpunk 2077”.

Dynamic lighting Instead of “prebaking” large parts of the lighting as in the action role-playing game “The Witcher 3” , so to render in advance at the start, sets CD Projekt to “Cyberpunk 2077” on so-called global illumination with dynamic day-night cycles. As a result, objects cast shadows that are appropriate to the position of the sun.

With the ray tracing setting “Psycho”, the developers go one step further and leave calculate global lighting using virtual light rays. However, this only applies to the sun, because the graphics performance is simply missing for full ray tracing. In the case of local light sources, dynamic cube and shadow maps are used to a large extent, which, for example, cast shadows when playing figures pass by. If you switch on ray tracing, the shadows run out realistically soft.

In addition, ray tracing scattered light, for example from the numerous billboards, influences the coloring of the surrounding surfaces. Even without ray tracing, lamps and display boards illuminate the frequently encountered vapor and haze. Also included: a ray tracing ambient occlusion (AO), which is responsible for the self-shading of objects, for example at edges, and works a little more accurately than the variant without ray tracing.

Ray tracing vs. classic rasterization The lighting in “Cyberpunk 2077 “looks good whether you enable ray tracing graphics effects or not. Even without the virtual rays, CD Projekt has made a great effort to come close to a realistic representation. As a result, the difference between completely rasterized graphics and ray tracing is not immediately apparent: The technology improves details that are particularly noticeable in direct comparison.

A little more stylish with ray tracing are reflective surfaces such as window panes and Puddles that show objects that are not in the player’s field of vision – without ray tracing these are completely hidden (screen space reflections). Without ray tracing, building shadows have hard edges on the ground; with ray tracing, these are soft. The ray tracing global illumination is also subtle: it influences the coloring of areas in penumbra, for example streets in urban canyons or under bridges.

The following screenshots are with almost maximum graphic details when DLSS is activated (Quality) emerged. Only the post-processing filters are switched off because they blur the picture.

Compare “Cyberpunk 2077 “with and without ray tracing (31 Pictures) Maximum ray tracing graphic effects in “Cyberpunk 2000”. To see: accurate reflections (1), soft shadows (2) and colors influenced by scattered light from the sun (3).

(Image: CD Projekt / Screenshot: heise online) Strong graphics card necessary for maximum graphics The ray tracing graphics effects in “Cyberpunk 2077 “are most likely to be of interest to gamers who use a fast RTX graphics card. Our test system consisting of Ryzen 7 3700 X, 32 GByte DDR4 – 3600 – RAM and GeForce RTX 3090 creates with maximized graphics in WQHD (2560 × 696 pixels) in demanding scenes around 30 to 45 Frames per second (fps). Without ray tracing, the fps are almost twice as high.

If you have a mid-range graphics card from the old 2000 generation uses, the ray tracing graphics effects should either reduce or switch off completely to increase the fps. In addition, CD Projekt has created sensible presets with reduced details. In addition, the AI ​​upscaler Deep Learning Super Sampling Technology (DLSS) helps, which reduces the render resolution. In the “Quality” setting, a third of the pixels per axis are lost without the image quality noticeably deteriorating. In our example, the frame rate increased to more than 60 fps.

on the CPU side uses “Cyberpunk 2077 “eight cores and more. In the case of AMD’s Ryzen processors, physical cores are strongly preferred; logical threads through simultaneous multithreading (SMT) are hardly used. User reports suggest that legacy code in AMD’s bulldozer-era compilers could be to blame. With Intel’s ten-core Core i9 – 3700 K all 20 Threads evenly utilized; The behavior can also be enforced with Ryzen processors by adjusting the hex in the game exe.

CPU usage by “Cyberpunk 2077 “; The game hardly uses logical threads with Ryzen processors.

(Image: Mark Mantel / heise online)

Graphics and sound not problem-free The shadows are still lacking in some places. Objects such as chairs in rooms are always lacking any shading, and some light sources generally do not produce any shadows. In the case of vehicles, this is deliberate and common practice in games: Stranger’s cars and motorbikes light up the street in front of them at night, but objects in front of the front do not create any shadows. After all: if you drive yourself, your own headlights cast shadows – be it people on the sidewalk, pillars or lanterns.

The wall lighting at the bar casts shadows, the fluorescent tube at the bottom of the counter does not.

(Image: CD Project / Screenshot: heise online)

Real lucky bags are mirrors: Sometimes your own character is as expected see, sometimes mirrors only represent pixel mud and sometimes your own character appears without any clothing – very detailed.

Example of a mirror that initially showed accurate reflections, but later only pixel mud.

(Fig : CD project / screenshot: heise online)

The so-called LOD provides for levels of detail that change according to the distance between object and player in order to save computing power and memory. In “Cyberpunk 2000” the system is quite aggressive even on the highest setting, What is noticeable in the details of buildings and the shading: characters moving around do not cast any shadows from a distance of a few (virtual) meters, the textures of buildings in the background often appear less detailed.

Example of shadows that can only be seen from close up.

(Image: CD project / screenshot : heise online)

The sound likes to crackle when music is playing – not with all players, but with us continuous. But the “3D” system works very well: Sound sources can be located very well, even without surround sound headphones.