Horizon Forbidden West on PC: Developers Explain Lack of Ray Tracing

With the PC release of Horizon Forbidden West, the absence of ray tracing in the game has been noticed and discussed. Developers from Nixxes Software, responsible for the PC port, clarified why they opted against incorporating ray tracing. Michel Rosa, an optimization programmer at Nixxes, shared that while they considered adding ray tracing, it was ultimately dismissed due to integration complexities and the desire to maintain graphical consistency across platforms.

Jeroen Krebbers, an original developer at Guerrilla Games, emphasized the game's vast scale and the need for compatibility between PS4 and PS5, which made the implementation of ray tracing impractical. In interviews, developers expressed admiration for ray tracing technology but noted that incorporating it into the PC version presented significant technical challenges.

Therefore, the lack of ray tracing in Horizon Forbidden West on PC was due to both technical limitations and the developers' intention to provide a consistent gaming experience across different platforms.