Ray tracing comes to Fortnite today
Ray tracing has officially come to Fortnite today, Epic Games announced in a blog post. Players using supported Nvidia GPUs and DirectX12 can now enable ray tracing and Nvidia's DLSS feature.
The update comes with all the usual improvements you'd expect with ray tracing. Improved reflections and shadows chief among them, but also ambient occlusion and real-time global illumination.
But don't take our (or Epic's) word for it. Epic and Nvidia teamed up to create a custom minigame map in creative mode that's supposed to show off all those new features. It's basically a giant museum full of little challenges, all wrapped up in a glossy, highly reflective package. The creative code for that is 9189-0518-5408.
If you're not able to hop into Fortnite at the moment, Epic has provided two images to show off the difference with ray tracing.
According to Epic's blog post, Nvidia's DLSS feature increases frame rate while using ray tracing, which makes sense since ray tracing is still a demanding feature for a lot of GPUs. Nvidia is offering three different performance options with DLSS, allowing players to choose between graphical fidelity or overall performance. Nvidia's Reflex feature, another part of the new update, also works to reduce CPU pressure during GPU-intensive scenes and lower latency. Nvidia has full details here.
Fortnite ray tracing system requirements
The big question on every Fortnite players' mind. Can you run ray tracing in Fortnite on your PC? Epic has released system requirements detailing how strong your rig will need to be.
Minimum requirements:
Requires DirectX 12
CPU: 4 cores or more
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or higher (use updated drivers; 450.00 and higher are supported)
Windows 10 version 1903 (May 2019 Update, build number 18362 or newer)
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Recommended System Requirements:
Requires DirectX 12
CPU: 8 cores or more
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 or higher (use updated drivers; 450.00 and higher are supported)
Windows 10 version 1903 (May 2019 Update, build number 18362 or newer)
To turn on ray tracing features in Fortnite, simply head to the settings menu in-game. Scroll on down to the advanced settings, where you'll see options for ray tracing, DirectX version, shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, and global illumination, then restart your system.
Epic showed off the first look at Fortnite with ray tracing enabled at the start of September with a brief trailer.
Don't forget to check out our other Fortnite guides and news.