'We wanted to focus on performance': Battlefield 6 developer explains why EA is skipping ray tracing at launch

Battlefield 6 seems set up to finally eat Call of Duty's lunch this year, after an inconsistent decade or so for the franchise. This is because of a sequence of smart moves around optimisation and a pretty hectic beta. Turns out, in an attempt to ensure better performance, the team have opted to entirely skip ray tracing, at least for the launch of the game.

Speaking to Comicbook.com, Christian Buhl, the technical director for Battlefield 6, said, "No, we are not going to have ray tracing when the game launches and we don’t have any plans in the near future for it either." This makes a lot of sense, and would ease some developer burden when it comes to optimising the game. As Nick pointed out last year, ray tracing is ever becoming the norm: something that is just required to play a game.

Ray tracing is a great way to nail lighting effects, but it can be intensive on rigs and pretty much requires some form of upscaling and frame generation. EA recently said it wants Battlefield 6 to run well without having to rely on DLSS, so moving away from ray tracing seems like a smart move.

When asked why EA skipped ray tracing, Buhl said, "that was because we wanted to focus on performance. We wanted to make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as [optimised] as possible for the default settings and the default users."

The beta lacked ray tracing settings, and you can certainly spot it. The Battlefield 6 beta was missing the iconic sheen of reflections in pools of water and glass, plus it didn't quite have those intricate shadows you expect from ray tracing. However, that doesn't mean the game doesn't look good. In fact, it looks pretty great so far, with punchy explosions and solid lighting nonetheless.

It is a bit of a departure for the series. Ray tracing has been enabled in many previous instalments, and Battlefield V's ray tracing was something lauded by Nvidia around its launch. Moving away from ray tracing doesn't just change how these games are optimised, but it also changes the art style somewhat.

As someone whose RTX 4070 Super has been a bit afraid of the moment I can no longer run most games on Ultra, I'm okay with Battlefield 6's Ultra requirements only being a little higher than my rig. Minimum spec players reportedly accounted for a "meaningful percentage" of the beta. EA has taken measures to get Battlefield 6 running on even budget rigs from half a decade ago, and, ultimately, I'd take full servers and a healthy community over better reflections any day. Still, it wouldn't hurt to get the option post-launch.

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