Battlefield 6 skips ray tracing to prioritise performance and accessibility

Battlefield 6, one of the year’s most anticipated FPS shooters, will not feature ray tracing at launch, nor does the developer Ripple Effect have any plans to support the technology in the near future. This move comes as the studio aims to maximise performance and smooth gameplay for its vast player base across PC and consoles.

Studio Technical Director Christian Buhl explained that the decision not to add ray tracing is a deliberate choice to make Battlefield 6 widely accessible, including to gamers with modest hardware. “We wanted to focus on performance. All of our effort was focused on making the game as optimised as possible for the default settings and the default users,” said Buhl. This demonstrates the studio’s commitment to prioritising maximum performance and broad accessibility over cutting-edge graphical features that only benefit those with high-end GPUs.

Ray tracing is a powerful rendering technique that simulates realistic lighting and reflections. It has become a desirable feature in many recent titles to enhance their visual appeal for gamers. However, it requires significant hardware resources, which can lower frame rates substantially. The exclusion of ray tracing means Battlefield 6 will deliver smooth visuals and an impressive destructible environment without sacrificing the dynamic, large-scale multiplayer action for which the series is known.

Battlefield’s core audience is largely unaffected by this news, as most players favour a smoother experience and ray tracing is not crucial for a multiplayer-focused game. This view was reinforced by feedback from beta testers; many users mentioned that the game offered solid performance and impressive visuals despite the lack of ray tracing effects.

The decision to forgo ray tracing in Battlefield 6 aligns with other major shooters, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which also lacks ray tracing to prioritise performance over visuals. This trend reflects an understanding among developers that gamers value optimisation and smooth gameplay, even on older hardware, over demanding visual features.