Will Horizon Forbidden West have ray tracing?

Horizon Forbidden West is on the way, and a popular question asked is whether or not it will use ray tracing. Ray tracing is a powerful graphic feature that simulates how light behaves in the real world. It produces incredibly realistic visual experiences in modern video games.

For a game like Horizon Forbidden West, which conveys a gorgeous open world, ray tracing would be a pertinent feature to include and would go a long way to help show-off the ruined world that must explore.

But will Horizon Forbidden West use ray tracing in the game? The answer is yes.

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Ray tracing will be used in a few ways in Horizon Forbidden West

Ray tracing is used for more than simply creating a more realistic world for Aloy to explore. Previous trailers have shown just how vibrant and alive the world is for the game, so it’s not much of a stretch to discover ray tracing is also part of it.

However, ray tracing is used in various portions of the game, according to Mathijs de Jong, game director of Horizon Forbidden West on June 6 2021. In an interview conducted by Hardware Zone, the game director said it would be used for the sound engine, physics, and rendering.

"We use ray tracing technology for a lot of things in the game. We use it for the sound engine, for the physics, and for the rendering. So we use a variety of technical setups, in terms of ray tracing. I'm not a tech engineer, so I can't explain it in much more detail than this. But yes, we are utilizing it."

Players will be exploring underwater areas, ruins, forests, and more in Horizon Zero Dawn's sequel, and trailers on YouTube can only convey so much. By tracing the path of light as pixels and simulating it encountering objects in the world as surfaces to shine on, ray tracing does a great deal to add to the overall gaming experience.

The overall design and world design of the game is stunning so far, and fans will see examples of the power of ray tracing in many aspects of the upcoming title. It creates immersive, visually appealing areas, and it has been confirmed that the PlayStation 5 game will take advantage of this powerful technology.