A Lunar-based sci-fi that focuses on space exploration as a means to save humanity is the sort of setting we can always get behind. And now, with the addition of stunning real-time raytracing effects, Deliver Us The Moon just made the top of our must-play list as the holiday season kicks off.

Powered by NVIDIA RTX with support for NVIDIA DLSS the new update adds real-time raytracing effects across a suite of features: shadows, opaque reflections, and translucent reflections.

Here's the trailer.

Ray-Traced Opaque Reflections

If you take a look around your room, you can see light reflecting off of nearly every surface. Smooth, hard surfaces like a coffee mug will have a bright shine and show some object reflections. The soft leather of your chair will give off a soft glow in the direction of your light source, and everything else in the room will likely fall somewhere along that spectrum. With so many objects able to reflect light sources and object details, it’s no wonder that most games only show a very limited number and type of reflections.

The power of real-time ray-traced opaque reflections allows a developer such as KeokeN Interactive to add reflectivity to every suitable surface in a scene. Suddenly, a room comes alive as each light source is faithfully reflected off of each object just as it would in the real world. And since each reflection utilizes the Fresnel Effect, it adds a sense of depth and distance in the space.

The lunar colonies of Deliver Us The Moon are filled with smooth metal surfaces that will let you see your character’s reflection, as well as your surroundings from the correct angle when ray-traced opaque reflections are enabled. And ray-traced shadows are also reflected, adding yet another level of depth and immersion to your experience.

Ray-Traced Transparent Reflections

Not all reflections are created equal. Just as objects range from shiny to dull, they can also have levels of transparency. You might not think that creating reflections for something such as a glass window would be any different than say, a shiny metal countertop, but you have to take into consideration everything that’s on the other side of the glass, as well as what’s being reflected.

Ray-traced transparent reflections add new details to a scene that simply weren’t possible using traditional methods. Now when you look out across the barren lunar landscape from inside the Copernicus Outpost, you’ll see the walls and lights behind your character softly reflected off the protective glass windows.

Just like with real glass, the objects beyond retain their crisp details, despite the accurate reflections on the window’s surface.

Ray-Traced Shadows

Shadows are a key visual element in judging the size and distance of an object. Shadows can also accentuate the depth and detail of the objects and characters in a room. Real-time ray-traced shadows grow softer the farther they get from the object that cast them, emulating the properties of real-life shadows. This creates depth in a scene and adds an additional level of detail to every object.

Abandoned colonies aren’t known for their abundant lighting, and Deliver Us The Moon uses this concept to create some exciting and immersive environments that are exponentially enhanced by ray-traced shadows.

As you navigate the deserted colonies of the Earth’s moon, your character and every object in the environment will cast realistic and immersive shadows onto their surroundings, no matter how small, thanks to real-time ray-tracing. Traditional shadow-casting methods like shadow mapping don’t allow for finer details for smaller objects. However, you can see the finer details in the shadow cast by the grated walkway in the screenshot above where ray-traced shadows were enabled.

Enabling these incredible ray-tracing features adds a new level of immersion to the game.

As we've seen with Remedy's Control the performance impact of ray-tracing has been getting better over time with an RTX 2060 able to handle Deliver Us The Moon at 1080p with a respectable frame-rate - that goes all the way up to 4K with an RTX 2080 Ti and DLSS enabled.

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