Fact Check: Does Atomic Heart support ray-tracing on PC?

Atomic Heart, the latest action-adventure title from Focus Interactive and developed by Mundfish, is one of the best-looking games of 2023. Although the game is a cross-generational title, i.e., available on both current-generation and previous-generation consoles, it still looks and feels like a "next-gen" title. This is also true for the game's PC version.

The game was in development for over half a decade, with many players believing the project would be canceled at some point. However, Mundfish powered through the game's development process to deliver Atomic Heart to players. The title has previously been marketed as a title that players can use to showcase the true capabilities of modern consoles and PC hardware.

Being one of the marquee titles constantly featured in Nvidia's graphics showcases, players expected the game to ship with all modern graphical capabilities, including support for upscaling solutions such as Nvidia's DLSS, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, Intel XeSS, and ray-tracing. While the game supports DLSS and FSR, it does not feature ray-tracing on PC.

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Atomic Heart does not feature ray-tracing on PC, with Mundfish promising to add feature in game's future update

Atomic Heart was featured in many of Nvidia's hardware ray tracing showcases that demonstrated real-time ray-traced reflections and advanced global illumination techniques used in the game. However, the game's release version, on PC and current-generation consoles, does not feature any form of ray tracing and solely relies on screen space reflections to project reflective surfaces.

During the game's half-a-decade-long development, Mundfish has constantly wowed players with the sheer graphical fidelity of Atomic Heart and how it has intelligently used ray tracing to deliver impressive visuals.

The omission of ray tracing in the game's launch version is jarring for many players. However, it should be mentioned that Mundfish has promised to add ray tracing as part of a future update for their game, which is yet to receive a concrete date.

Ray tracing isn't a big deal for many players. Given how effective screen space reflections are in Munfish's latest FPS action-adventure title, few players will notice the lack of hardware-level ray tracing.

However, it is still odd to see a game that prominently featured ray tracing in its marketing not come equipped with the said feature upon release.

Atomic Heart isn't the first game to leave out ray tracing before launch while adding the feature as a post-launch update. FromSoftware's most recent title, Elden Ring, which also won the "Game of the Year" award at The Game Awards 2022, was promised by the developers to receive ray tracing (for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC) as a post-launch update.

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Atomic Heart is now available on current-generation (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S) and last-generation (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) consoles, along with PC. The game is also available to download and play at no extra cost to Xbox Game Pass subscribers.