The 1.62 update forCyberpunk 2077started rolling out on April 11, arriving alongside an in-depth changelog detailing the new patch. This is the first update to the hit open-world RPG sinceCyberpunk 20771.61 patch rolled outin November 2022.The PC-only update largely revolves around enhanced ray-tracing support arriving as part of aCyberpunk 2077Overdrive Modethat CD Projekt Red already detailed at GDC 2023 in late March. Much like its name suggests, this is a fairly ambitious addition to the game that pushes its graphical fidelity to an extreme. It does so by relying on path-traced rendering which generates multiple rays for each pixel and bounces them in a random direction every time an object is hit. The resource-intensive process continues until a given ray encounters another light source or reaches an arbitrary bounce limit.RELATED:CD Projekt RED Addresses Edgerunners Rumor for Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom LibertyThisshinier version ofCyberpunk 2077is unsurprisingly only reserved for the most powerful machines out there equipped with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 (1080p only) or RTX 40 Series graphics cards. The newly shared patch notes reveal that the 1.62 update also adds some other graphical settings to the game, including support for Nvidia DLAA, an AI-powered antialiasing solution for smoothing out curves on a per-pixel basis.
That’s not the only AI technology introduced by the 1.62 update, with its patch notes also mentioning the addition of support for Intel Xe Super Sampling 1.1. Intel XeSS is essentially an alternative toCyberpunk 2077’sDLSS 3.0 frame generationfor dynamic scene upscaling. Apart from being capable of outputting similarly polished frames, XeSS has the advantage of being a bit less resource-intensive. This makes it slightly more readily available across Intel’s GPU offerings relative to how widespread DLSS support is within the Nvidia ecosystem.
Finally, theCyberpunk 20771.62 update also improves the in-game benchmarking tool. Its results screen will now include more in-depth information about a given system, including its hardware specifications and driver details, as per the latest patch notes.
While this definitely isn’t the last update to the hit game, its end-of-life is now fast approaching; CDPR already ended support forCyberpunk 2077on last-generation consoles in late 2022 and plans to wrap up all development work shortly after the release ofPhantom Liberty, the game’s first and only expansion. The DLC is planned to debut sometime in the second half of 2023. Keanu Reeves will be reprising his role of Johnny Silverhand for the espionage-themed expansion, which will also introduce Solomon Reed, a new character played by Idris Elba.
Intel XeSS
Benchmark improvements
Cyberpunk 2077is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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