Fortnite is now 'RTX On!' Real-time Ray Tracing announced for Epic Game's popular battle royale

Epic Game's and NVIDIA today announced that Fortnite will be adding real-time ray tracing, AI-powered NVIDIA DLSS and more to the game.

The reveal was done by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, who also unveiled the new GeForce RTX 30 Series of GPUs at the same virtual event.

Matt Wuebbling, VP of Global GeForce Marketing at NVIDIA said, “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.”

Gamers will be able to experience everything that ray tracing has to offer in all of Fortnite's modes, as well as a special new Creative mode map, named RTX Treasure Run. This map has been designed specifically to highlight ray tracing in the game. 

Other ray tracing features coming to Fornite 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.

Boosting performance and quality with AI

Fortnite will be using NVIDIA DLSS, which uses AI powered by RTX Tensor Cores to boost frame rates and generate sharp images. It uses deep learning neural networks to provide gamers with more headroom to maximise quality and output resolution.

NVIDIA Relfex on Fornite

Fortnite will be one of the first games to support NVIDIA Reflex, which helps measure and reduce system latency. Improved latency means better performance overall, with improved resposiveness and precision in game. Low latency is especially useful in competitive games, such as battle royales like Fortnite.

Fortnite RTX Treasure Run Map

The new RTX Fortnite map which showcases ray-tracing has players drop into a museum, on a treasure hunt, highlighted with different ray-traced effects. The museum has plenty of different environments to explore, such as a  hall of mirrors, medieval castle and jungle, climb a giant statue and explore a shrunken science lab in their search for treasure. These features will be coming to Fortnite in Chapter 2 – Season 4 for PC players.