After an announcement last month, Nvidia has just released the complete presentation video regarding 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 different environments in Alan Wake 2, the only title to benefit from it so far was another game from the Remedy studio, FBC: Firebreak.
The GDC announcement focused on the highly anticipated The Witcher 4, which will take advantage of a new version of RTX Geometry to generate several million objects per scene, especially in the game’s dense forests.
Nvidia has released the full presentation video of the technology, giving us more insight into its operation and the surprising performance in The Witcher 4.
Martin Stich, Nvidia’s director of engineering, detailed the precise statistics of the demo presented a few weeks ago. The scene displayed an area of about 25 km2 and contained around 60 million plants from 200 different species, totaling about 1 million trees rendered in real-time. Path Tracing was naturally integrated, offering precise control of light at the pixel level by developers.
Stich emphasized that no texture or object streaming feature was used in the scene, and each tree was meticulously modeled by CD Projekt Red, “down to the smallest branch.” With The Witcher 4 operating on a much larger scale than Alan Wake 2, it showcases a significant leap in technology.
The most interesting aspect lies in the game’s performance when the feature is activated. On a GeForce RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS set to Quality mode, the game runs at around 80 FPS. On a RTX 4070, players can approach 60 FPS with the same DLSS settings. According to the engineer, 12 GB of video memory is required for this demo. In this scenario, Path Tracing dictates the overall game performance, followed by DLSS and Ray Reconstruction.
This offers a promising initial indication for The Witcher 4, as it’s the first glimpse into the game’s performance, expected to be released by CD Projekt Red in 2028 at the latest.
