Ray tracing is slowly becoming more and more common in games. But that does not necessarily mean becoming a part of all titels. The newly arriving Battlefield 6 does not use it and the developers have now explicitly confirmed that this is intentional and there are no plans to add it later. Instead, the game focuses on being playable for a wide range of users, which might be the better choice for a title that emphasizes multiplayer.
The Comicbook website spoke with representatives of the game’s developers and asked whether ray tracing would be available in Battlefield 6. The game, which you can currently test in open beta, currently does not provide any option to enable ray tracing effects. According to Ripple Effect studio’s technical director Christian Buhl, this is by design. Reportedly, a decision that the game would not use ray tracing was reached quite early in development.
The reason is the still significant performance cost of ray tracing, while the studio wanted to tune the game to run as well as possible. And not only on new and expensive hardware, but also on cheaper and older graphics cards. One might argue that ray tracing could be added as an optional feature regardless, but according to Buhl, the studio wanted to optimize the game so that the default settings (without ray tracing) would work as well as possible. Instead of focusing on image quality with high-end hardware, the studio’s focus was on what kind of performance “everyone else” could get.
It is interesting because one of the previous entries in the series (Battlefield V) was the very first title to implement ray tracing graphics. However, it came with a high performance cost. In contrast, ray tracing is not planned at all for Battlefield 6. This applies not only for the initial launch—the company reportedly does not plan to patch in ray tracing mode in the future either (though it cannot be ruled out that they might change their mind later or release some “enhanced edition” a few years from now).
Battlefield 6 has so far been met with a warm reception and could therefore become a very popular game. The bet on broader accessibility in terms of hardware demands was likely a fortunate choice that will open the game to a wide audience.
Low requirements
Battlefield 6 has relatively modest requirements for a AAA title. The recommended hardware (for playing at 1440p / High Details at 60 FPS or 1080p / Low Details at 80 FPS) is a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, Radeon RX 6700 XT, or Intel Arc B580 graphics card, and an Intel Core i7-10700 or Ryzen 7 3700X processor. But for less demanding players, the minimum requirements are lower.
To run at 1080p with low detail and at 30 FPS (without upscaling, at native resolution), just a 6GB graphics card is needed: a GeForce RTX 2060, Radeon RX 5600 XT, or Intel Arc A380 (paired with an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU). The game does require Secure Boot to be enabled for its anti-cheat system, but even very old PCs can meet this requirement. It’s not really a barrier, more a matter of user preference.
This focus on performance makes sense for many games. Besides making them accessible to a broader user base, there’s also the fact that series like Battlefield and Call of Duty are built around multiplayer, which always has a competitive aspect. In player-versus-player confrontations, performance (frame rate and the lowest possible latency) is crucial, while graphics quality is something that is often intentionally sacrificed—much like in eSports gaming. Visual fidelity in general, and techniques like ray tracing specifically, are in conflict with the goal of maximum performance. That’s why no one today expects ray tracing to be added to a series like Counter Strike.
This does not mean that gaming graphics should turn away from ray tracing again. However, it is a reminder that ray tracing and performance in ray tracing—or, more broadly, increasingly realistic and technically demanding rendering—are not the only direction for games and GPUs to take, but merely one valid option among others. (And perhaps today’s gaming and GPU industries also need a reminder that they shouldn’t focus solely on frame rates achieved through upscaling and tricks like frame generation.)
Sources: Tom’s Hardware, Comicbook
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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When you think about it, this is a competitive fast paced game, I doubt you’ll sit around looking at the puddles to check the reflections instead of shooting your way through enemies 🙂
On the other hand, an enemy who enjoys reflections in a puddle will probably be quite popular. 😀
That reminds me of a story from the days when my friend and I used to “competitively” play Crysis. It was a really long time ago, but we believed that lying in tall grass on very high graphical settings made us invisible. Wrong assumption. Our opponent was playing on the lowest settings, and apart from the little character lying on a hill with a Gauss rifle, haha, he saw nothing (no grass at all, in which we thought we were perfectly camouflaged). 😀
😀 The Emperor’s New Clothes v2.0 😀
I thought the same way once with Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition—the graphics of the original game seemed good enough. But apparently not… after AoE II: DE came out, I never launched AoE II: HD again. It’s true that it’s a somewhat different situation with a bigger difference (and AoE doesn’t even use such advanced technologies), but still…