WoW Shadowlands beta allows players to test the newly added ray-tracing, enhancing the game’s visual fidelity with more realistic shadows.
World of Warcraft has historically used a single directional light (e.g. a skybox containing a sun, a glittering galaxy, or a chaotic cluster of lightning) to illuminate a scene. At times, we’d insert a light inside a space even when it didn’t necessarily have a source—for gameplay purposes, we can’t have you scouring a dungeon in complete darkness, even if the area has no obvious objects to act as a light source. With the addition of ray-traced shadows, World of Warcraft can now support additional shadow-casting lights (e.g. fire).
As you can see in the second image, with ray-tracing enabled, the light of the campfire casts more accurate shadows such as the rope inside the tent, the rocks around the campfire and the tauren’s shadow itself.
Check out the official preview to learn more about what ray-tracing changes for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.
Battle for Azeroth is coming to a close very soon. Are you sure you have collected everything that is going away? Check Blizzard’s official list of things to do before Shadowlands to find out!
