Here's how Battlefield 5 looks with Nvidia RTX effects

At its Gamescom event today, Nvidia announced the new GeForce RTX line of graphics cards, which are available September 20—just in time for holiday game releases, including Battlefield 5. At the event, Nvidia and DICE showed off what can be done with the Turing GPU architecture and real-time ray tracing in Battlefield 5, namely with regards to reflections.

With the help of Nvidia's real-time ray tracing tech, something that isn't possible on the best graphics cards currently, DICE is able to reflect explosions, fire, and the surrounding environment dynamically, emulating the surfaces of water, glass, and cars while taking into account the angle at which the player is viewing them. The clip below shows off how a flamethrower looks with RTX enabled and disabled:

Another example, in the clip below, shows the destruction of a building being reflected in the window of a streetcar, a bit of detail you won't see with the cube maps of old:

And finally, DICE shows us how a V1 rocket explosion affects the whole scene:

The GeForce RTX line so far includes the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070, and while those reflections do look mighty alluring, they won't come cheap, with the cheapest card announced so far—the Founder's Edition RTX 2070—going for a buck under $600. We'll have more on Nvidia's new tech and cards as Gamescom 2018 continues.

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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.