Ray tracing is improved with Nvidia’s DLSS 3.5, and it’s cruising to Cyberpunk 2077 this week

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Image: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 will become the first game to support Nvidia DLSS 3.5, the latest version of the chipmaker’s upscaling technology. The update will arrive on September 21st with Update 2.0 — just days before the launch of the game’s Phantom Liberty expansion.

DLSS 3.5 uses a new technology called Ray Reconstruction, which Nvidia describes as an AI-powered technique that enhances the quality of ray tracing. Ray Reconstruction swaps “hand-tuned denoisers” with an AI network trained by a supercomputer that should result in higher-quality pixels between sampled rays.

Additionally, DLSS 3.5 is trained using five times more data than DLSS 3. It should also be able to identify different ray-traced effects to “make smarter decisions about using temporal and spatial data” to allow for higher-quality upscaling.

Image: Nvidia

In Cyberpunk 2077’s case, that translates to improvements to the quality and clarity of reflections, more accurate global illumination, and better lighting. Along with better ray-tracing, the game’s Update 2.0 will also add vehicle combat and car chases, a “revamped” police system, and redesigned perk and skill trees. When Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty comes out on September 26th, it will also support Nvidia DLSS 3.5.

Crucially, while DLSS 3 was limited to RTX 40-series graphics cards, DLSS 3.5 will be available to all RTX GPUs. That means you’ll see these benefits even on a five-year-old RTX 2080. Other games, including Portal with RTX, Alan Wake 2, and Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project are set to get DLSS 3.5 later this fall.