Shadow of the Tomb Raider will feature bleeding edge Real-Time Ray Tracing

At the start of Gamescom, Square-Enix has unveiled that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is going to have real-time ray tracing. The extremely advanced visual technology is relatively new and just has been demonstrated by graphics card manufacturer Nvidia at their keynote event last week. Called GeForce RTX, the new graphics feature is promising nothing less than a giant step towards real cinematic lighting done in real-time.

Ray Tracing has long been a Holy Grail in the video game industry, with many people wondering whether they would ever witness the technique implemented in actual game releases and not tech demos. It looks like the time has finally come.

Nvidia, the world’s most popular graphics chip creator, unveiled their new RTX series of ray tracing capable GPUs last week. At a keynote event just before Gamescom, Europe’s biggest gaming trade show, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia personally unveiled their newest product to the public. Nvidia GeForce RTX is the new family of GPUs promising to deliver on the decade-old dream of achieving movie-like cinematic quality for games.

“An iconic pop culture figure like Lara Croft deserves the cinematic treatment that ray tracing can deliver. As soon as we first experienced NVIDIA RTX in our lab, it was clear that Square Enix, Eidos-Montréal, and Crystal Dynamics would be ideal partners to debut it with.” – Tony Tamasi of Nvidia

This news on its own would have already been a major deal for gamer but Nvidia put the icing on their ray traced cake by announcing several upcoming blockbuster games to feature the cutting-edge visual method. Since the technology is very new and hardware-intensive, only PC players with access to the newest GeForce RTX GPUs will have the chance to experience ray tracing for now.

One of those games is Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the third entry into the reboot of the cult action-adventure game featuring legendary game protagonist Lara Croft. With the kick-off for Gamescom, Square Enix is highlighting the technical prowess of Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a new trailer, showcasing the impressive RTX technology. We get to see much more than “only” real-time ray tracing however, with incredibly detailed vegetation and landscapes, gorgeous physical destruction and HDR lighting.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is launching September 14, on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Make sure to check out earlier gameplay videos highlighting the gameplay.