A new version of the Cyberpunk Ultra Plus Better Path Tracing and Stutter Hotfix mod is now available for download via NexusMods.
sammilucia, the author of the mod, has provided the following changelog for the new Cyberpunk Ultra Plus v0.7 update, which appears to deliver even greater visual quality than the original version of the mod that debuted in October thanks to a number of changes, including a new sharpening filter:
- Finally fixed crazy white transparencies in default path tracing by changing TransparentReflectionEnvironmentBlendFactor from 1.0 (vanilla) to 0.05
- Enabled RIS sharpening (ty to Carlosironman). RIS is better/newer sharpening quality than DLSS. it looks like it’s enabled for NRD, but it appears to enable the debug option enabled to work correctly (i.e. it appears disabled by default)
- Increased raytracing proxy updates per frame from 192 to 384 (Full) and 768 (Insane). I can’t test Insane, so please let me know if you get any stutters from RT if it’s overloading tensor cores
- Enable farther snapping of meshes (to 20km) which is likely actually a performance optimisation and seems very fast (algorithmically), so should be used everywhere
- Reduced shadow fade fraction from 10cm to 5cm
- Re-enabled SSR fallback. After further testing, SSR is used to fill in “some” reflections that path tracing doesn’t, for example reflecting fog/steam in puddles. They are not quite physically based, but after a lot of testing in “most” places they are more physically accurate than not having them. It can make a few areas (e.g. Afterlife ceiling) unrealistically brighter. If you are purist PT, you might want to disable this.
- Reduced RT blur radius resolution of Insane to 50%, which should reduce PT noise
- Slightly increased several quality radii settings for Insane
- Increased ForceAutoHideDistanceMax from 2000.0 to 16384.0 for Insane (ty to PuffyQuail)
- Forced LOD1 shadows to always be used for Insane (ty to PuffyQuail)
- Increased BounceNumber to 3 for screenshots (Insane only). In all my testing I have never seen 4 bounces make any difference, but 3 does in rare situations
- Fixed issue where skin subsurface scattering was too little when looking in mirrors and inventory screens (PT is not used here)
- Increased PT reflections to 7km for a few locations for Insane (Judy’s lake)
According to the list of key features that sammilucia originally shared, this mod is supposed to deliver a massive increase in path tracing performance, and not only that, the visuals shouldn’t look any worse than the vanilla version of the game:
- Improves path tracing performance by up to 40% with the same or better visuals, depending on the version you use (see Performance below for details)
- Improves visual quality of path tracing in most situations
- Improves resource loading stutters (streaming) by increasing Oodle compression workers from 2 to 8
- Fixes crushed blacks by expanding lower histogram
- Fixes some poor PT scenarios by enabling probabilistic ray sampling
- Improves ray noise in dark areas by increasing dark area ray sampling
- Disables character rim lighting (should not be enabled with path tracing)
- Attempts to increase LODs of everything to improve DLSS/FSR Balanced and Performance modes
- Enables ambient occlusion on eyeballs
- Adjusts skin for path tracing with reduced PT noise
- Adjusts hair for path tracing with more accurate roughness and specular highlights
- Attempts to reduce Fresnel (reflections at an angle like on wet grass) on weapons, plants, skin for path tracing
- Reduces bright/white transparent materials (glasses/bottles/cabinets/windows) around the place with PT enabled
- Increases shadow details in some situations
And here’s a video of sammilucia’s Cyberpunk Ultra Plus Better Path Tracing and Stutter Hotfix mod in action on a system with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 Ti MASTER, per the UriahRhone channel:
The Cyberpunk Ultra Plus Better Path Tracing and Stutter Hotfix mod comes with three quality options, including an Insane version, although sammilucia has recommended that be reserved for GeForce RTX 40 Series users, for reasons that include Frame Generation.
Some of the visual issues that users might encounter with the mod include flashing and flickering, per UriahRhone’s description.