With the Xbox One natively supporting the DirectX 12 API and Cyberpunk 2077 coming to consoles in addition to PC - CD Projekt RED notes that at launch Cyberpunk 2077 will be a DX12 only affair. Meaning that you'll need Windows 10 to get the most out of it - though Windows 7 will be supported. Most of all it allows the studio to implement cutting edge features like ray-tracing on PC that take full advantage of NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards.

With Cyberpunk 2077 at launch set to support DXR Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination, Ray-Traced Reflections, Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion and Ray-Traced Shadows. Plus, DLSS 2.0. If it's anything like Death Stranding's implementation anything from a RTX 2060 on up will get great performance.

The latest trailer, as per below, was captured in 4K on PC with ray-traced effects turned on.



Speaking with German publication PCGH, Jakub Knapik and Marcin Gollent opened up about the game's tech. "We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons," Marcin Gollent explained. "Firstly, it is the standard API for the Xbox platforms, and with the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to have it implemented as soon as possible. Secondly, it is the birthplace of DXR, and given we had plans to invest in DXR very early on, that made the choice to go with DX12 a pretty straightforward one."

With or without ray-tracing Cyberpunk 2077, will look impressive - and the result won't be the night or day difference seen in something like Minecraft with RTX. "Our goal was to create a rendering platform that would use PBR (physically-based rendering) rules and a realistic approach to lighting on all platforms," Jakub Knapik added. "That paradigm made ray tracing a natural extension of the idea, the next step in its evolution. We worked on a hybrid solution that is added on top of our already existing setup, replacing some of our lighting subsystems with ray-traced equivalents."

The result is ray-traced shadows and other effects adding a more realistic and cost-effective alternative to the older methods, as Marcin Gollent explains. "Ray-tracing is going to make the world-building process easier and less technical. It should allow the lighting artists to focus on their vision more, and be less distracted by the technicalities. Technicalities required, for example, to set up a game location without custom tweaks needed to make lighting work within more complex architecture. It holds the promise of making the world-building and art direction workflows simply faster."

Although Cyberpunk 2077 will be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X on day one, advanced visual features will be limited to the PC release and NVIDIA GPUs (although AMD ray-tracing support could very well be there too). Which means if you want to experience the game in all the detail we've seen so far - best to pick this one up on PC.