The number of confirmed ray tracing games for [cms-block] and selected GTX graphics cards has just got a little bit longer. With E3 2019 in full swing, Nvidia have confirmed that both Watch Dogs Legion and the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will also be getting full ray tracing support, and in the case of Call of Duty, adaptive shading support as well.

That ray tracing games list is still pretty small, admittedly, and the number of games you can find it in right now> can almost be counted on a single hand. Indeed, a lot of confirmed RTX games are yet to receive their ray tracing and performance-boosting DLSS support, so the list below is more of a complete ‘this is how many games will have it eventually’ kind of thing than ‘these are all the games you can play with ray tracing right this very second’. Still, if you’re currently on the fence about buying one of Nvidia’s RTX 2060, RTX 2070, RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards as opposed to one of the new [cms-block] GPUs, this guide should hopefully help you decide whether ray tracing is something worth investing in. Here’s every confirmed ray tracing and DLSS game we know about so far.

(more…)

With the arrival of Nvidia’s new GTX ray tracing driver, the number of graphics cards that can now take advantage of the tech giant’s fancy new lighting tech has grown exponentially. In addition to the four new [cms-block] cards, everyone with a 6GB GTX 1060 and up can now get a taste of that ray tracing magic. Sort of.

Alas, the number of confirmed ray tracing games is still pretty small. There have been a couple of new, notable additions to the list in recent months, including Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, but even now the number of games you can find it in right now> can be counted on a single hand. The same goes for Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS tech, which is still only available on the RTX 2060, RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. So I thought I’d do the hard work for you and put everything in a nice, big list, detailing every confirmed ray tracing and DLSS game we know about so far.

(more…)

Lovely as Metro Exodus was, the extremely Russian post-apocalyptic FPS came (optionally) bundled with a sealed mystery vault of goodies in its season pass. Now, 4A games have finally revealed what’s in the box, and it thankfully doesn’t sound too painful. There are two expansions on the way, the first offering a more classic linear Metro story, and the second adding another open-world sandbox zone to explore, and both put you in the shoes of new characters. The first expansion – The Two Colonels – is out this summer, and the second – Sam’s Story – launches in early 2020. Below, details and possible spoilers if you’ve not finished the main game.

(more…)

Last month, I put Nvidia’s GTX ray tracing driver to the test, seeing what kind of speeds were possible on the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 in Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The results, it’s fair to say, were pretty mixed. Metro was completely unplayable on both cards, but Tomb Raider did, in fact, show promising signs of life as long as you kept its ray tracing setting on Medium – which ended being such a minuscule kind of effect that it was barely worth bothering with.

Now, I’ve got the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti back in to see what they’re capable of as well. Can our new best graphics card champs’ new Turing GPUs make a better go of ray tracing than the GTX 10-series’ old Pascal architecture? Let’s find out.

(more…)

The Epic Games Store is no longer the only place to buy its exclusives, as the promised partnership with the Humble Store has begun. You can now buy Epic keys for Metro Exodus and Dangerous Driving from Humble, as well as pre-order Borderlands 3 (you know better than to pre-order, of course). These still run through the Epic Games Launcher on an Epic account, so it’s not a huge change, but this does mean they benefit from the wee discount of Humble subscriptions and might be in sales more often.

(more…)

At the end of last week, Nvidia released a new Game Ready driver that unlocked their fancy pants real time ray tracing tech for GTX 10 and 16-series graphics cards, starting with the 6GB GTX 1060. Before that, you had to have a shiny new Nvidia RTX card to take advantage of all their realistic lighting effects in games such as Metro Exodus, Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the cheapest of which is the still quite pricey 330 / $350 RTX 2060.

Technically, Nvidia’s GTX 10-series has always> been able to do ray tracing – it’s just it’s never really been possible due to the sheer amount of graphical grunt involved to render it all in real time. And to some extent, it’s still> not really possible – at least not in games such as the super intensive Metro Exodus, for example, which employs practically every current ray tracing technique under the sun. But in other games where developers have employed slightly lighter ray tracing techniques, such as the shadows in (you guessed it) Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it’s actually more feasible than you think – and I’ve been putting my 6GB GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 cards to the test to find out exactly what kind of speeds you can expect to see with ray tracing switched on.

(more…)

Deep Silver have cancelled a load of Metro Exodus Steam keys sold through key resellers after discovering, they say, the keys had been stolen from the factory making boxed copies. Metro Exodus switched to Epic Games Store exclusivity late enough in development that they produced physical PC copies set up for Steam, then swapped out the Steam keys for Epic keys and stuck Epic stickers over the Steam logo. Apparently some scoundrel scooped those abandoned Steam keys to sell on, Deep Silver found out, and they’ve now cancelled those keys, removing the game from the Steam libraries of players who bought them.

(more…)

Experienced riders of the post-apocalyptic Russian rails in Metro Exodus can now upgrade to first class with a New Game+ mode, starting their journey afresh with all their weapons and gear from the end of the game carried over to a new save. That arrived in today’s update, along with a running commentary from the conductors (developer commentary tapes) explaining more about the train’s journey (the game’s development). Plus performance improvements, bug fixes… patch stuff.

(more…)

HDR on PC continues to be a bit of a mess these days, but provided you haven’t been put off by the astronomical prices of the [cms-block]s for HDR or, indeed, the ongoing debacle surrounding Windows 10 support for it, then the next step on your path to high dynamic range glory is to get an HDR compatible graphics card.

Below, you’ll find a complete list of all the Nvidia and AMD graphics cards that have built-in support for HDR, as well as everything you need to know about getting one that also supports Nvidia and AMD’s own HDR standards, G-Sync HDR and FreeSync 2. I’ve also put together a list of all the PC games that support HDR as well. There aren’t many of them, all told, but I’ll be updating this list with more titles as and when they come out so it’s always up to date.

(more…)

I like bad weather and I m not sure why. Maybe it s the raw, sublime beauty of it. More likely, it s a form of meteorological Stockholm Syndrome. I ve lived in Britain long enough to appreciate being constantly rained on (at least until Summer when my face melts off onto the pavement). But the bad weather I m talking about lies in the Goldilocks zone. I want neither the tacky Clintons Christmas card nor the photoshopped Thomas Cook travel brochure. No, I want that grey zone, that drizzle into downpour. In Metro Exodus, I found the sogginess I long for.

(more…)