Fortnite is Now RTX ON! World’s Most Popular Battle Royale Adds Ray Tracing, DLSS and Reflex

Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, is about to get faster, more beautiful, and even more responsive on PC with the addition of groundbreaking NVIDIA technologies. Ray-traced visual effects, NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, and a custom RTX map will be added during Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 4, thanks to a new Epic Games and NVIDIA partnership.

Immersive ray-traced effects, powered by GeForce RTX’s RT Cores, dramatically improve the fidelity and detail of Fortnite’s stylized world. With NVIDIA DLSS, performance is greatly accelerated thanks to Tensor Cores, found exclusively on GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series GPUs. And NVIDIA Reflex reduces the time it takes for your actions, like your character’s movements, to be displayed on your monitor, increasing responsiveness.

"The GeForce RTX 30 Series is a testament to NVIDIA’s dedication to ray tracing and artificial intelligence. Second generation ray tracing, innovative use of AI with DLSS, and a large raw performance boost make the GeForce RTX 30 series a truly impressive powerhouse for graphics technology in gaming." – Marcus Wassmer, Engineering Director - Graphics, Epic Games

Take a first look at these features in the new Fortnite GeForce RTX trailer below, and keep reading to learn more.

Epic Games and NVIDIA’s partnership dates back years, with engineers at both companies pioneering new technologies and features that are later introduced to Unreal Engine, the industry’s most popular game engine. Then, developers around the world can quickly and easily add the very same tech to their own titles, making them better and more beautiful.

In 2018, we shocked the development community with the unveiling of Reflections, the world’s first ray tracing demo that –astoundingly-- ran in real-time, at high resolutions, with world-class denoising, at a smooth, fluid framerate. And now, we’re bringing ray tracing to all of Fortnite’s modes, following its initial debut in Epic’s excellent Fortnite trailers.

These effects will launch in September as part of a new game update, and once installed you’ll experience enhanced visuals, new sights, and stunning scenes.

The ray-traced effects of Fortnite on PC include:

Ray-Traced Reflections: This setting adds beautiful, realistic, super accurate reflections to bodies of water and other suitably reflective surfaces in Fortnite. See game detail, characters, enemies, weapon effects, and more, perfectly reflected throughout the world. And experience improved lighting, as light sources and other illumination will be accurately reflected onto nearby surfaces and objects, making gameplay look and feel even more dynamic.

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Ray-Traced Shadows: With ray tracing enabled, Fortnite’s dynamic shadows get a significant upgrade, enabling them to realistically stretch across the scene, with accurate softening as the distance from the shadow source increases. Particularly of note is the enhanced resolution of Ray-Traced Shadows. You can see this clearly in fine detail shadows, such as those created by chain link fences. Furthermore, Ray-Traced Shadows dynamically update as the time of day changes, with effectively infinite precision.

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Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion: Where objects or surfaces meet, light is occluded, creating subtle shadows. In games, this Ambient Occlusion (AO) is key to grounding objects and the smallest details. With ray tracing, we can make AO shadowing far more accurate, further improving Fortnite’s fidelity.

Click to load a fullscreen interactive comparison

Ray-Traced Global Illumination: Fortnite’s maps and worlds are composed of dynamically built and destroyed objects, preventing pre-baked light interaction. Due to this, sky lights provide the only real-time environmental lighting. Ray traced global illumination adds additional bounced light that is otherwise impossible to simulate in Fortnite.

Click to load a fullscreen interactive comparison

GeForce RTX GPUs are the world’s fastest, and in titles with NVIDIA DLSS they get even faster. DLSS uses an AI-powered deep learning neural network and the Tensor Cores found exclusively on GeForce RTX graphics cards to boost frame rates while generating beautiful, crisp visuals.

In Fortnite, NVIDIA DLSS will accelerate performance, enabling gamers to experience ray tracing at higher resolutions and framerates on GeForce RTX GPUs.

To showcase the possibilities of ray tracing and DLSS, we’ve partnered with top Fortnite creators to craft the RTX Treasure Run, accessible via Creative mode. The map drops players at the entrance to a museum where they are challenged to a scavenger hunt that highlights the different ray-traced effects. Along the way, players can explore a hall of mirrors, a medieval castle, a jungle, climb a giant statue and explore a shrunken science lab to seek-out and find hidden treasures.

This custom map has players racing to collect treasures faster than up to 3 others. Or alternatively, shirk the treasure collecting to gawk in wonder at the incredible ray-traced rooms, sights and scenes. The RTX Treasure Run is coming soon. Stay tuned for more information on availability and how-to-play. 

NVIDIA Reflex is a revolutionary suite of technologies that measure and optimise system latency in competitive games, making gameplay more responsive. With lower latency, you can acquire targets faster, react quicker, and improve your aim.

In Fortnite, we’ve worked with Epic to incorporate our NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency SDK, which helps the game engine efficiently submit rendering work to your GPU, reducing latency and improving the responsiveness of gameplay.

To further reduce latency, check out our NVIDIA Reflex article, which details everything you can do – from tweaking system settings, to increasing your framerate, to changing your monitor and accessories to ones optimised for NVIDIA Reflex.

NVIDIA is the pioneer of real-time videogame ray tracing, and together with Epic brought it to life for the first time back in 2018 in the groundbreaking Reflections demo. Now, we’ve collaborated to bring ray tracing and DLSS to Fortnite, the cultural phenomenon with more than 350 million players.

To enjoy and experience Fortnite’s ray tracing at its very best, be sure to play on a GeForce RTX GPU, where our Ray Tracing Cores, Tensor Cores, Game Ready Drivers, DLSS and Reflex technologies deliver the definitive Fortnite experience, with the highest levels of detail, at the highest resolutions, and at the fastest framerates.

Get ready for Fortnite with RTX coming soon to Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 4.

For more on GeForce RTX GPUs, DLSS, Reflex, and the best ray-traced gaming experiences, check out our other GeForce.com articles.