NVIDIA had another big Gamescom 2024 announcement to make, although it is a bit staggered due to a later embargo compared to the others: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will join Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, and Black Myth: Wukong in the very restricted club of PC games that support NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 and full ray tracing.
Also known as path tracing, it was only viable for offline rendering and, therefore, limited to usage in movies and TV series until not long ago. It was only the arrival of upscalers and specifically frame generation techniques that allowed its real-time application to gaming, starting with CD Projekt RED’s open world game once Update 1.6.2 went live in April 2023. Alan Wake 2 followed suit last Fall, and Black Myth: Wukong launches today.
All of these games have been made with different engines (REDengine 4, Northlight Engine, and Unreal Engine 5) and the same is true for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is powered by id Tech. We don’t know which version of the engine is being used, but it was most likely based on id Tech 7, which powered DOOM Eternal.
That game ran extremely well, but then again, it only featured ray traced reflections (added with a post-launch update). MachineGames does have some experience, having added ray traced reflections to Wolfenstein: Youngblood with a post-launch update, but the performance cost will be much higher in this case.
The official PC system specifications of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle have yet to be released, but we’ll let you know once the developers share them. In related news, you can read our preview from the pre-Gamescom presentation and an in-depth developer Q&A with MachineGames in this article. The game will launch on PC and Xbox Series S|X on December 9, while a PlayStation 5 version is coming next Spring.
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