‘Fortnite’ Is RTX On! Real-Time Ray Tracing Comes to One of Most Popular Games on the Planet

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By NVIDIA On Sep 2, 2020

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NVIDIA and Epic Games announced that Fortnite the epitome of battle royale gaming and a cultural phenomenon with more than 350 million players worldwide is adding real-time ray tracing, AI-powered NVIDIA DLSS and other groundbreaking technologies, making the game more beautiful and even more responsive.

The game was featured today as part of a GeForce® special event where NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the new GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs.

“Epic Games is turning Fortnite, which is already a pop culture sensation, into a showcase for how competitive gaming will improve with technology,” said Matt Wuebbling, vice president of Global GeForce Marketing at NVIDIA. “Fortnite players are about to experience the stunning visuals of next-level ray tracing, AI-accelerated frame rates powered by NVIDIA DLSS, and our new low-latency esports technology suite, NVIDIA Reflex.”

NVIDIA RTX™ GPUs are the only ones on the market with hardware support for ray tracing and AI. Gamers will experience these features in all Fortnite modes, as well as in a special new Creative mode map, called RTX Treasure Run, which has been specifically designed to highlight ray tracing.

“The GeForce RTX 30 Series is a testament to NVIDIA’s dedication to ray tracing and artificial intelligence,” said Marcus Wassmer, engineering director of Graphics at Epic Games. “Second-generation ray tracing, innovative use of AI with DLSS, and a large raw performance boost make the GeForce RTX 30 Series a truly impressive powerhouse for graphics technology in gaming.”

Ray Tracing Comes to Fortnite

Fortnite will add four ray-traced features, for a more immersive gaming experience. These include:

Ray-traced reflections – Recreates the way light reflects on glossy and metal surfaces, including smooth natural mirrors like window glass and rougher surfaces like brushed metal.
Ray-traced shadows – Accurately models shadowing on many surfaces while enhancing surface and contact detail, and fixes problems associated with traditional shadow techniques.
Ray-traced global illumination – Calculates world lighting with massively increased precision, illuminating Fortnite’s environments, players and characters with unprecedented detail, fidelity and clarity.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion – Where objects or surfaces meet, light is occluded, creating subtle shadows that can highlight the slightest of surface details.

All told, ray tracing will bring a new level of detail and realism to Fortnite’s Battle Royale, Creative and Save the World modes.

Using AI to Boost Performance and Image Quality in Fortnite

NVIDIA DLSS, which uses AI and is powered by RTX Tensor Cores, is a deep learning neural network that boosts frame rates and generates beautiful, sharp images for games. It provides gamers the performance headroom to maximize quality settings and increase output resolution.

NVIDIA Reflex Comes to Fortnite

Fortnite is one of the first games to support NVIDIA Reflex, which measures and reduces system latency. Reflex allows gamers to improve responsiveness, increase aiming precision and tune their system for battle.

“NVIDIA Reflex technology arms developers with new features to minimize latency in their games. We’re seeing excellent responsiveness and player control with Fortnite running on the GeForce RTX 30 Series,” said Nick Penwarden, vice president of Engineering at Epic Games.

System latency is the time it takes for a player’s actions to appear as pixels on the monitor and quantifies how the game feels. In games like Fortnite, NVIDIA Reflex low-latency mode dynamically reduces system latency by up to 42 percent in GPU-bound scenarios.

New Fortnite RTX Treasure Run Map Spotlights Ray Tracing

NVIDIA and Epic collaborated with top Fortnite creators on the new RTX Treasure Run map, which highlights the new technologies Fortnite is adding. The map drops players at the entrance to a museum where they are challenged to a scavenger hunt that highlights different ray-traced effects.

Along the way, players can explore a hall of mirrors, medieval castle and jungle, climb a giant statue and explore a shrunken science lab to uncover the most treasures in the least amount of time. RTX Treasure Run is coming soon.

The new features are coming soon to Fortnite Chapter 2 – Season 4 for PC players and make Fortnite a flagship title for next-generation gaming technologies.