After an announcement last month, Nvidia has just released the complete video presentation about the future of Path Tracing. It includes many details on the implementation of RTX Geometry technology in “The Witcher 4.”
Nvidia announced a new iteration for its RTX Geometry technology last March. The first version was introduced in 2025 with the Blackwell graphics cards (RTX 50) and aimed to significantly increase the geometric complexity of real-time scenes while saving video memory.
While it shone with the various environments of “Alan Wake 2,” it was the only title that could benefit from it until now along with another game from the Remedy studio, “FBC: Firebreak.”
The GDC announcement focused on the highly anticipated “The Witcher 4,” which will leverage a new version of RTX Geometry to generate several million objects per scene, especially in the dense forests of the game.
Nvidia has released the complete presentation video of the technology, providing more insight into its operation and the surprising performance of “The Witcher 4.”
1 million trees in “The Witcher 4” forest: Martin Stich, Nvidia’s engineering director, detailed the precise statistics of the demo presented a few weeks ago. The scene displayed an area of about 25 km2 and contained nearly 60 million plants from 200 different species, rendering approximately 1 million trees in real-time. Path Tracing is crucial for pixel-perfect light control by developers.
Stich emphasized that no texture or object streaming functionality was used in the scene, with each tree modeled by CD Projekt Red “down to the pine needle.” With “The Witcher 4” on a whole different scale compared to “Alan Wake 2.”
The most interesting part concerns the game’s performance when activating the feature. On a GeForce RTX 5090 in 4K with DLSS set to Quality mode (1440p internal resolution), the game runs at about 80 FPS. On an RTX 4070, players can reach close to 60 FPS with the same DLSS settings. According to the engineer, 12 GB of video memory is needed for this demo. In this scenario, Path Tracing dictates the game’s overall performance, followed by DLSS and Ray Reconstruction.
A promising first hint for “The Witcher 4”: This is the first time we see the performance of “The Witcher 4” while the game is not expected for several years. CD Projekt Red has transitioned to Unreal Engine 5 and is improving the engine by implementing its own technologies.
Considering the complexity of this demo, 80 FPS in 4K with DLSS Quality is an encouraging initial hint about the game’s performance. For comparison, “Cyberpunk 2077” on our RTX 5090 with the same settings runs at about 60 FPS in Path Tracing. It’s a technical demo, but it presents a scene infinitely more complex geometrically.
CD Projekt Red seems determined to surpass technical standards again with “The Witcher 4,” expected to be released by 2028 at the latest.
