Dying Light: The Beast has received a significant visual upgrade with the launch of version 1.04, which introduces ray tracing support on PC. The update expands the game’s visual toolkit by enabling ray-traced shadows, global illumination, and reflections, offering players the option to pursue more realistic lighting throughout Castor Woods. This feature arrives with the major Update 1.4 released in late November, which added ray tracing support, New Game Plus, and Legend Levels.
Early comparisons show that ray-traced shadows are among the most immediately notable improvements, providing smoother and more accurate shadow definition. Surfaces and objects produce more natural silhouettes with fewer visual artifacts. However, players may notice a reduction in shadow rendering distance, which becomes visible in larger open areas and alters how distant geometry is lit. This trade-off between accuracy and coverage reflects the current limitations of the implementation.
Ray-traced reflections are also included, though with mixed results. They appear primarily on surfaces such as glass and small puddles, and their resolution remains inconsistent. Full body reflections and large water surfaces do not currently support ray tracing, limiting the impact of this feature in broader environments.
The most transformative element is global illumination, which produces clear differences in specific interior and exterior scenes. Light bounce behaves more naturally, color bleed becomes more believable, and several lighting inconsistencies present in the standard pipeline are corrected. These improvements contribute to a more atmospheric tone, aligning well with the game’s survival horror identity.
Despite these upgrades, the performance cost is substantial. Enabling the complete suite of ray tracing features results in an approximate 50 FPS loss compared to the game’s maximum settings without ray tracing. This reduction makes it challenging for many systems to maintain high frame rates unless users are prepared to scale back other settings or utilize image reconstruction technologies outside the game’s default options.
Dying Light: The Beast was released on September 18, 2025, continuing the story of Kyle Crane in a new open world that features parkour routes and a rage-driven combat system. The game is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, with versions for PS4 and Xbox One planned for release later.
