Battlefield 6 drops ray tracing for better performance

When Nvidia launched its very first RTX series graphics cards in 2018, it brought real-time ray-tracing to the video game world. One of the first games to showcase RT effects was Battlefield V, and the series has included ray-tracing in its graphics options ever since. That won't be the case this year though, with Battlefield 6 removing ray-tracing in favour of greater performance. 

During an interview with ComicBook, developer Christian Buhl confirmed that ray tracing is not included in the Battlefield 6 options menu at launch. Buhl added that the team doesn't have “any plans” to introduce ray-tracing effects in the near future either.

The main reason for this feature's removal is to save on performance. Buhl says that the studio wanted to “make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as optimised as possible for the default settings and the default users”.

This decision was made “relatively early on” and won't be changing anytime soon. There have been games in the past that have added Ray Traced graphics months after launch, but I wouldn't necessarily expect that from Battlefield 6, unless there is some kind of vocal fan demand.

The decision is an odd one, as Battlefield 6 will be the first game in almost a decade to have a full single-player campaign.

Battlefield 6 is launching for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 10th.

KitGuru Says: Are you looking forward to Battlefield 6? Do you want to see Ray Tracing in the game, or are you happy to go without it? 

Become a Patron!