Today is the day that Diablo IV gets its ray tracing update, which was developed in collaboration with NVIDIA. Blizzard has released a detailed explanation of each improved effect, starting with shadows.
By default, with the rasterized method, shadows are way too hard and stark. When enabling ray tracing, they get much more sparse, soft, and realistic as they get further away from the object they were cast from, as you can see in the screenshot comparison below.
The other major ray traced effect added to Diablo IV is reflections. For instance, spell effects and even distant environmental objects that are off-screen are reflected in the example below.
Interestingly, despite having been developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, ray traced effects are also available on consoles, provided that Diablo IV players select the Enhanced Visuals mode.
There are some caveats, of course. This mode targets 30 FPS and also doesn’t feature the full breadth of ray tracing available on PC. Here’s what the in-game description says:
Enhances some shadowing and reflections with ray tracing. Improves quality of other effects such as fog, hair, and fog.
Blizzard didn’t just add ray tracing and called it a day: more visual improvements have been introduced with the update. Ambient Occlusion, for example, has been enhanced on all platforms, although PC users with the Ultra Quality setting turned on will notice the largest improvement.
Lastly, Contact Shadows have been enhanced to include not only the player character (as was previously the case) but all player characters, NPCs, and even monsters.
In just two days, Diablo IV will also debut on Game Pass as decreed by Microsoft, which has now published a brief guide on how it’s going to work. On PC, players will have to install Battle.net if they haven’t already and connect the Game Pass and B.net accounts to play the game.
It also looks like the game won’t support Xbox Play Anywhere, so players won’t be able to seamlessly jump between Xbox and PC.
