F1 2021 is now officially available on PC and consoles. For a complete review of the game, check out Chris’s opinion; here, though, we’ll focus on the PC performance boost enabled by NVIDIA DLSS for all gamers that use a GeForce RTX GPU.
According to NVIDIA, frame rates improve by up to 65% when playing at 4K resolution. From the RTX 3070 GPU upward, all graphics cards allow for more than 60FPS with maxed settings.
NVIDIA also shared a brief video gameplay comparison of F1 2021 with NVIDIA DLSS enabled and disabled. For some reason, though, the implementation of NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling technology in this game leaves a lot to be desired; to begin with, it’s not possible to select different DLSS presets from the options, and the official benchmark linked above suggests F1 2021 has DLSS locked at Performance Mode with an output resolution of 4K. Furthermore, while in other games the difference between DLSS Performance Mode at 4K and native was almost indistinguishable, the same can’t be said for F1 2021.
F1 2021 also supports ray tracing technology on next-gen consoles (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X) and PC, as the developers had revealed in a recent interview with Wccftech. Specifically, the game uses raytraced reflections and shadows to further improve its visuals in cut scenes, replays, Photo Mode, and within the front end
For Codemasters, the application of reflections and shadows have been particularly important, with significant resources invested in higher-quality effect presets, and custom-made techniques. Now, they’ve taken the next logical step and upgraded to ray tracing, adding real-time reflections and shadows.
With ray tracing, all surrounding detail is accurately reflected on each car, and on windows, water surfaces and other metallic game elements, which previously lacked reflections, or featured simple cube maps. Now, all reflect the world around them, improving fidelity and realism. And with ray-traced shadows, existing shadows are enhanced with more accurate detail that naturally softens and sharpens, and many more smaller game elements now cast shadows, further enhancing the realism and quality of circuits, cars, and other game elements.
Did you get F1 2021 yet? If so, are you enjoying it? Let us know below.
