Fortnite: Fortnite gets Ray Tracing, but what is it?

Ray Tracing has been one of the latest graphical updates to come to the wider world of gaming, and it was recently announced that it would soon be added to Fortnite. Although the graphical identity of Fortnite never really relied on high graphical fidelity, improving the game’s ultimate appearance certainly makes it more attractive.

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What is Ray Tracing and how will it affect Fortnite?

Experience Fortnite with #RTXOn.Ray tracing and DLSS are coming to @FortniteGame!Hitch a ride on the Battle Bus or collaborate to create your dream world with GeForce RTX. pic.twitter.com/7uOzrurq6L

— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) September 1, 2020

Ray Tracing, as its name implies, is a graphical feature that allows your computer and graphics card to accurately simulate how rays of light would realistically interact with the world. This means things like reflections, ripples, and how light would blend and occlude off of different surfaces can be accurately portrayed in the high-saturation world of Fortnite.

With the resolutions we have currently achieved, the amount of improvement along that axis needed to create a noticeable step above what we have increases exponentially, and designers have been looking for other ways to improve the graphical fidelity of games. Lighting has been one of the more important areas to improve the graphical appearance of modern games.

Because we have such a high amount of experience looking at worlds lit by all sorts of light sources, both artificial and natural, we understand innately what looks real and what doesn’t. This is why we can tell if something is wrong with the lighting in a game or animated movie, and why Ray Tracing was developed to amend that.

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Will I be able to run Fortnite with Ray Tracing?

Fortnite NVIDIA Ray Tracing should arrive at some point during September! pic.twitter.com/9jSJ5SSys9

— Merl (@Merl) September 1, 2020

So long as your computer’s graphics card has the ability to support Ray Tracing then you should be able to experience Fortnite with Ray Tracing on. If you prefer to play on consoles instead, however, then you will be pleased to know that both the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X have announced Ray Tracing as a feature they intend to support.

As for everyone else, you might be waiting quite a while to play Fortnite at a similar graphical level on other devices.