EA and DICE have officially confirmed to the outlet ComicBook that Battlefield 6 will ship without any ray tracing features. No fancy RT reflections, no realistic shadows, and no advanced global illumination. Instead, the game will stick to traditional rasterized graphics across all platforms.
Christian Buhl, the Studio Technical Director at Ripple Effect, reasoning is straightforward. They want everyone to enjoy stable, high frame rates, whether they’re playing on a budget PC, a PlayStation 5, or an Xbox Series X. Ray tracing might look impressive in screenshots, but it comes with a heavy performance cost that most players simply can’t afford.
This marks a notable shift for the franchise. Battlefield V introduced ray-traced reflections back in 2018, making it one of the first major games to showcase Nvidia’s then-new RTX technology. Battlefield 2042 followed with RT ambient occlusion on PC. But those experiments came with mixed results. Players often had to choose between pretty visuals and competitive performance.
For Battlefield 6, DICE is focusing on a single lighting solution that works the same way for everyone. This approach has multiple benefits. First, it ensures competitive fairness. When some players have ray tracing enabled and others don’t, the different lighting can create subtle visibility advantages. One player might spot an enemy in a shadow that looks different on their screen.
The development benefits are equally important. Supporting two separate lighting systems means double the work for artists and engineers. Every map, every time-of-day setting, and every visual effect needs to be tested and optimized twice. By sticking to one rendering path, DICE can focus their resources on what makes Battlefield special: massive battles, destructible environments, and smooth networked gameplay.
The hardware reality also played a role in this decision. While many modern GPUs technically support ray tracing, maintaining 60–120 frames per second with RT enabled remains a challenge even for expensive graphics cards. Battlefield‘s 128-player matches, with vehicles, explosions, and physics calculations happening constantly, already push hardware to its limits.
Frame rates over eye candy
Community reaction has been largely positive. Many players remember struggling to maintain playable frame rates in previous Battlefield games when RT was enabled. The general consensus seems to be that smooth gameplay beats visual bells and whistles, especially in a high-speed multiplayer shooter where every millisecond counts.
DICE hasn’t completely ruled out adding ray tracing after launch, but they’ve made no promises either. For now, the focus is on delivering a polished experience that runs well for the widest possible audience when the game releases. The Frostbite engine will still deliver impressive visuals through advanced rasterization techniques, dynamic lighting, and atmospheric effects. Just without the performance hit that comes with real-time ray calculations.
