The Witcher 3 Remaster's Path Tracing Optimized with a Mod

Players are offered to sacrifice graphics quality.

The remaster of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was recently released on consoles and PC. CD Projekt RED added path tracing support, but performance left much to be desired. Some users began experimenting with the new tracing, and there are first successes in optimization.

A modder under the nickname HourLines presented their project dedicated to improving the performance of path tracing in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remaster. They suggested reducing the number of calculated secondary light reflections.

As a result, the modder explains, on their PC with an RTX 5070, at 1440p resolution with DLSS, performance increased by approximately 10% in open areas, and by about 30% indoors.

This solution comes at a price: the modder warned that indoors, when playing with path tracing, "the darkest corners become about 10% darker — less light is reflected in them." Outdoors, they did not observe any changes in brightness.

With regular ray tracing, global illumination will react slightly slower to changes in light sources.

The modification "Path Tracing and Ray Tracing Optimization (Remastered)" for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is distributed for free via Nexus Mods.