Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Talks About Upcoming Path Tracing Improvements, FSR3 Support, and Unreal Engine 5 Switch

Following the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Update 2.0, CD Projekt RED was able to further elevate the game’s visuals compared to the already amazing base game thanks to additions like NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 (Ray Reconstruction).

However, with the Path Tracing mode still technically in preview and other tech-related topics worth discussing (chiefly the promised implementation of AMD FSR 3 and the engine switch from RED Engine to Unreal Engine 5), we reached out to the Polish studio for a follow-up interview. You can read the replies by Jakub Knapik, Global Art Director at CD Projekt RED, below.

In our previous interview, you mentioned working on Opacity Micro-Maps support for Cyberpunk 2077. Is that still coming with a future update? What about Displaced Micro-Mesh?

Micro-Mesh is a fascinating technology that will allow us to get much better geometry fidelity cheaper — but it needs a new asset pipeline in place to seriously make gains with it. Taking into account the fact that our game is truly massive, and it is already a mature game with its release clocking almost three years, we focus on the technology progress accordingly. We try to create measurable visual and performance gains for the players that do not require massive reworks on the content side, as that would be a huge time investment. That’s why Micro-Maps, with very little extra work on the content side, were implemented and already released with Phantom Liberty. It made a lot of sense to do that as soon as possible.

In the aforementioned Q&A, you said there was still lots of room for improvement on the Path Tracing Technology Preview. Are you still planning to add new features or improvements to the mode?

We are still maturing our Path Tracing implementation. We focused on low-light image stability and overall image quality delivered with Path Tracing. We implemented a quality booster for indirect calculations that stabilized the situations where there normally was a little luminance energy, and as a result, we had a low amount of light samples, resulting in a “boiling” and blurriness effect. We also worked on some details of the image presentation targeting character rendering. Overall I think we managed to bring the solution to a very stable and visually mature state with the planned release.

The addition of DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction was unanimously praised upon release. However, some fringe cases of smearing, halos, and posterization were discovered. Are you working with NVIDIA to solve these issues?

As I mentioned above, I would say that is exactly the area where we focused mostly on: leveling up the quality of our RT: Overdrive mode. I do feel we have made good progress there and, hopefully, will be able to share it soon.

It has been confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 will be updated to support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3. Can you share any ETA on when FSR 3 will be available?

This is a new and very interesting technology and I can definitely confirm that we are working on a full FSR3 implementation — but it is still an ongoing process and we feel we need still more time to release it with the desired outcome. I would like to avoid giving firm estimates on when it will happen.

Cyberpunk 2077’s excellent visuals and performance have raised some doubts regarding the announced engine switch to Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Recent UE5 games have shown the engine’s growing pains, not to mention that it lacks built-in path tracing. While it is certainly early, can you share some thoughts to assuage those fears and confirm whether CDPR still plans to ship future games with cutting-edge features even after the switch to a third-party engine?

I think one of the fundamental forces that shape our progress at CD PROJEKT RED is ambition; a passion to make things our very own way and create games for players with better storytelling and visual quality with every release. At the same time, we proved in the past that we also push the technology to its limits to achieve our goals. Our teams gained an amazing perspective and knowledge of solving technical problems that many would consider as safe to avoid solving, and I think moving to Unreal Engine changes nothing in that regard.

We also try to build very close and strong relationships with our partners, and that approach has allowed us to deliver many amazing things in the past — with our recent Path Tracing implementation being a very fresh example of this strategy. Again, nothing changes in that regard, either. For sure, Unreal is a different engine with a different balance in terms of how it’s built compared to REDengine, and we will definitely put in a lot of effort and share a lot of passion with our partners in order to harness Unreal Engine’s greatest strengths and expand its capabilities so we can create the games we wish to make for our players. What’s more, we again aim to push technical boundaries while doing so; we have not made our ambitions any smaller in the slightest when it comes to that.

Thank you for your time.