Battlefield 6 doesn’t have ray-tracing, and its developer has said there are no plans to add the feature down the line.
While ray-tracing has been notably missing from Battlefield 6’s open beta tests, it wasn’t entirely clear if this was just because the game was in beta or if it was a deliberate choice. Turns out, it’s the latter.
Despite being a popular inclusion in some games, ray-tracing’s more natural method of simulating lighting can also prove to be draining on your PC or console’s system resources — and it’s for this reason that the competitive shooter won’t include it. Indeed, Christian Buhl — studio technical director at Ripple Effect, one of the studios working on Battlefield 6 — has told Comicbook that while the PC version of Battlefield 6 will have over 600 different options in its settings menu, “ray-tracing won’t be one of them and there’s no plans to bring it into the game in the near future.”
“No, we are not going to have ray-tracing when the game launches and we don’t have any plans in the near future for it either,” Buhl said. “That was because we wanted to focus on performance. We wanted to make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as [optimized] as possible for the default settings and the default users.
“So, we just made the decision relatively early on that we just weren’t going to do ray-tracing and again, it was mostly so that we could focus on making sure it was performance for everyone else.”
While most people would likely sacrifice visuals to preserve performance during multiplayers mode, this may be disappointing news for some players who’d hoped to have ray-tracing in Battlefield 6’s upcoming single-player campaign, when the time comes to play.
Earlier today, we highlighted a nine-minute slice of Battlefield 6’s battle royale mode that has leaked online. This particular video not only gives a good look at what to expect from the mode, but also reveals a couple of gameplay mechanics we didn’t previously know about, too, including swimming, one of the gadgets, and its “massive map.”
Battlefield 6 releases on October 7. We’re having a great time with what we’ve played so far, writing in our Battlefield 6 review-in-progress: “Right now, even in beta form, Battlefield 6 might be the most fun shooter I’ve played this year.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
