In context: Ray tracing and realistic illumination are becoming staples of modern gaming, especially on PC, where gamers are more willing to pay for significant hardware upgrades. However, one high-profile publisher is moving in the opposite direction, at least for now.
Battlefield 6 will not include ray tracing graphics at launch, and there are currently no plans to integrate advanced lighting effects in the future. According to Christian Buhl, Studio Technical Director at Ripple Effect, the PC version of the upcoming shooter will offer plenty of customization options, but ray tracing will not be among them.
Formerly known as DICE LA, Ripple Effect is one of several studios working on Battlefield 6 alongside DICE, Criterion Games, and Motive Studios. In a recent interview, Buhl said the PC version will feature more than 600 different graphics settings, but ray tracing will be excluded. He confirmed that the game will not support ray tracing at launch and that no plans exist to add it in the near future.
Ray tracing is quite taxing on the GPU, and the studios developing Battlefield 6 decided relatively early in the process to focus entirely on performance. Their goal was to create a game optimized to run well on a wide range of systems. According to Buhl, Battlefield 6 should at least deliver solid performance on the "default" settings for most players.
Buhl did not clarify what "default" actually means. The official system requirements for Battlefield 6 are fairly modest compared to other graphically intensive shooters such as Doom: The Dark Ages.
EA's upcoming first-person shooter is primarily designed as a multiplayer experience, and players who enjoy online competition will likely appreciate the focus on performance for the next chapter of the Battlefield series.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is another multiplayer-focused shooter that abandoned ray tracing to maximize performance. Resourceful players could choose to enable the advanced lighting effects anyway, but they could experience some issues as a consequence.
In addition to multiplayer, Battlefield 6 is also expected to include a single-player campaign. If that proves true, players with high-end gaming hardware may be disappointed by the absence of ray tracing, which could have delivered a more visually immersive experience.
Buhl reiterated that EA has no plans to implement the technology in the near future, though it could potentially be added as a later update years after release.
DICE previously worked with Nvidia to bring optimized ray tracing to Battlefield V. This time, however, the strategy appears to be different, with EA focusing on turning Battlefield 6 into a massively popular multiplayer franchise that could attract millions of players across a wide variety of hardware setups.
Battlefield 6 drops ray tracing to prioritize performance at launch
