Fortnite gets ray tracing and DLSS

News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson Former News Editor

Published on Sept. 1, 2020

Nvidia and Epic Games today announced that Fortnite is adding real-time ray tracing and AI-powered DLSS.

Fortnite was featured today as part of an Nvidia showcase where the company revealed the new GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs.

Players will be able to experience these features in all Fortnite modes, as well as in a special new Creative mode map, called RTX Treasure Run, which has been "specifically designed" to highlight ray tracing.

The game will feature four ray-traced features:

Ray-traced reflections – Recreates the way light reflects on glossy and metal surfaces, including smooth natural mirrors like window glass and rougher surfaces like brushed metal.
Ray-traced shadows – Accurately models shadowing on many surfaces while enhancing surface and contact detail, and fixes problems associated with traditional shadow techniques.
Ray-traced global illumination – Calculates world lighting with massively increased precision, illuminating Fortnite’s environments, players and characters with unprecedented detail, fidelity, and clarity.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion – Where objects or surfaces meet, light is occluded, creating subtle shadows that can highlight the slightest of surface details.

Nvidia DLSS, which uses AI and is powered by RTX Tensor Cores, boosts frame rates and generatessharper images for games. It provides gamers the performance headroom to "maximize quality settings and increase output resolution."

Fortnite will also be one of the first games to support Nvidia Reflex, which measures and reduces system latency. Reflex improves responsiveness, and increases aiming precision. Reflex low-latency mode will "dynamically reduce" system latency by up to 42% in GPU-bound scenarios.

As far as the new RTX Treasure Run map is concerned, it will highlight the new tech Fortnite is adding. The map drops players at the entrance to a museum where they are challenged to a scavenger hunt that highlights different ray-traced effects.

Along the way, you will be able to explore a hall of mirrors, medieval castle and jungle, climb a giant statue and explore a shrunken science lab to uncover the most treasures in the least amount of time.

RTX Treasure Run and new features are coming soon to Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 4 for PC players.