Witcher 3 Looks (even more) Amazing with Marty McFly’s Ray Tracing Shader ReShade Mod

[Sabrewulf...]

Had to share this as I am actively playing Witcher 3 for the first time and it is definitely one of the best games I've ever played!

"The Witcher 3 is a great looking game that still manages to hold its own years after its release. Having been released four years ago, the game could have never received ray tracing support, but this doesn’t mean that it cannot be introduced through unofficial means.

In a fresh new video, which can be found below, it’s possible to check out how amazing The Witcher 3 looks with ray tracing. This is made possible by the Marty McFly’s RT Shader developed by Pascal Gilcher.

The developer recently shared how he managed to implement this peculiar form of ray tracing.

What I’m doing is ray tracing in screen space, tracing rays against the depth buffer (a data buffer that contains the information how far an object is away, as opposed to the color buffer which tells you what color the object has and what you usually see in any game). When compared to DXR, it has several limitations: anything behind another object does not contribute, anything outside the screen does not contribute, backfaces do not contribute. The benefits of this shader is that it can run on every game and GPU and it’s a step up from regular SSAO. I hope this serves as a sneak peek at what DXR ray tracing can do and why everyone in VFX can’t wait to get real ray tracing for their games.

Pascal Gilcher’s shader is still in the works and it’s currently only available to those who pledge to his Patreon. The developer aims to release it to the public once development has proceeded further."



Best examples below @ 4:55 (side by side)



Very impressive so far, have to try it out when the shader gets its public release.

 

[lostin3d]

Thanks for posting.

As someone who has an embarrassingly 488 hours with this game I'm doubtful I'd do yet another replay(I'm just finishing my fifth or sixth or more) to test this but I'll definitely keep an eye out for it. FWIW though, this is the only game in my life I've dedicated that much time to lol. Off the top of my head I don't know if there's a ongoing W3 thread on [H]ard but I did read on DSOG a week or so ago about a mod that enables people to create content to add to it now. The only downside is they say it requires fairly advance skills to use.

 

[Youn]

awesome. The bounce from the white ground on his legs is too extreme, that'd be the first thing I'd tweak... also ambient occlusion is just nasty looking in general I'd definitely turn that down or off completely.

Also the trees/plants... is there really a tornado so often in this game, or are they like dancing always or what... really breaks immersion for me

 

[lostin3d]

Also the trees/plants... is there really a tornado so often in this game, or are they like dancing always or what... really breaks immersion for me

Game has really diverse weather such as rain, snow, wind, full transitions from day to night with some spectacular sunsets and sunrises, and all are usually customized to geographic factors. No tornado's but rain can get torrential and there are wind-type storms in some regions. Nice thing though is that the environmental audio matches pretty well with the visual effects most of the time so you actually do hear the trees and leaves blowing in the background. I do agree though about what you're stating with the trees/plants. When the winds pick up things can get pretty spastic looking. It's not the mod, it's the game. It's unfortunately one of those engines that doesn't necessarily render everything at the same fps and this is a good example. Things that are close up are mostly even while the background objects/characters can get wacky at times.