Modder added path tracing to Dark Souls II - graphics improved, but FPS dropped sevenfold

In May, a modder known as Ganaboy released a new beta version of the DS2LightingEngine SotFS modification, which adds path tracing to Dark Souls II.

In this version, Ganaboy fixed some graphical bugs. For example, the issue with the pink/glowing effect that occurred when playing on AMD / Linux and Intel graphics cards was resolved. He also corrected lighting and image glitches in Shulva and the Mist Tower. In the Heide's Flame Tower, he adjusted the settings so that the colors more closely matched the original version of the game.

Previously, the author of the YouTube channel MxBenchmarkPC reviewed an older version of the mod and compared its graphics with the standard version of Dark Souls II. Path tracing indeed significantly improves image quality, but this comes at the cost of performance. For example, on a PC with a GeForce RTX 5080, when playing in 4K with DLSS 4.5 "Quality," the frame rate dropped from 500+ to ~70 FPS.

A video comparison of Dark Souls II with and without path tracing is available at the following link.

The old version of the DS2LightingEngine SotFS modification is available on Nexus Mods, and the latest beta builds can be found in the Discord*-community of the "DSLightingEngine Discord" project.

• *(violates Russian Federation legislation requirements)