Who needs ray-tracing? Check out this spectacular next-gen lighting mod for The Witcher 3 instead, ahead of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch

While Cyberpunk 2077 is set to deliver a genre-redefining next-gen RPG experience in the months to come, CD Projekt Red’s classic The Witcher 3 continues to be a favourite in the modding community. 

The new “True Fires” mod substantially improves fires, a major light source in The Witcher 3’s medieval environs. Draw distances on fires are increased and a number of fires are flagged as dynamic light sources, allowing them to cast shadows. This brings The Witcher 3’s visuals a step closer to the still-unmatched E3 2013 trailer.

According to the mod’s creator, sw3dg1n, True Fires builds on the existing Immersive Lighting mod. Because of the substantially larger number of dynamic light sources, performance takes a considerable hit. With True Fires enabled, certain areas of the map can see frame rates plummet by double digit numbers. 

However, together with the celebrated HD Reworked high quality texture mod, True Fires might just be worth it, especially for users rocking high-end graphics cards like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.