Tears of the Kingdom looks at it’s best with ray tracing on PC

Ray tracing makes Tears of the Kingdom even nicer to look at

Jack Goodall

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is here, and one user has gotten it working on PC with ray tracing enabled. All we can say is that the game looks absolutely beautiful with the real-time lighting and reflections technology boosting up the graphical fidelity to max. There’s even more to it too – because the game is even running at a resolution above what is possible on it’s native Nintendo Switch.

We talk all about how this has been achieved and how the game is being played on PC. Ray tracing has been a big thing in gaming for a while now, but it’s definitely limited on more lightweight devices like the Switch. That’s why it’s nice to see a big title with a beautiful in-game world like TOTK receiving the ray tracing treatment. The game can be pushed up to incredibly high graphics settings thanks to powerful gaming rigs.

Tears of the Kingdom ray tracing enabled

The video below demonstrates ray tracing in Tears of the Kingdom at 1440p @ 60 FPS. Over on the Nintendo Switch, the game is limited to 1080p at a targeted 30 FPS, and the handheld screen on the switch only reaches 720p. So, a massive upgrade to behold.

This gameplay shows TOTK running on the Yuzu early access emulator, using a custom REVO ReShade v6.0 config. This reshader was developed for the predecessor Breath of the Wild, but as you can see, is working perfectly on the sequel – which is running on the same engine. Perhaps a mod more geared towards TOTK exclusively can improve the visuals even further.

Some people argue that this is not ray tracing, as it relies on ‘remarching’ techniques instead. However, the line is blurry – as this in-depth reddit comment explains.

Tears of the Kingdom ray tracing specs

The best thing is that this demonstration isn’t even using the best gaming components out there. In fact, the build sits a little closer to the mid-range. Other PC players have got the game running at 8K @ 60 FPS on some more powerful hardware as well.

Here’s how the specs look for the 1440p ray tracing gameplay:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-11800H
• GPU: RTX 3070 Mobile
• Memory: 16GB RAM

How to play Tears of the Kingdom on PC

Of course, to get ray tracing working, the game isn’t being played on the Nintendo Switch. For this, the game has to be running on a PC. This isn’t natively supported by the developers and is instead achieved by using a Nintendo Switch emulator for PC. Some of the popular emulators for the Nintendo Switch include Yuzu or Ryujinx.

As we said, emulators are not typically support by game devs, certainly not by Nintendo. They’ve tried to crack down on emulation plenty of times over the years. Instead, emulators such as these are usually fan-made projects. But as you can see, the work is paying off for users on PC that want to push TOTK to look at it’s best.

Tears of the Kingdom ray tracing FAQs

Tears of the Kingdom ray tracing : Final word

So, now you’ve seen Tears of the Kingdom ray traced – or ‘remarched’ if you like. It’s definitely a sight to behold and shows off the potential of the game’s engine and graphics mods.

We aren’t saying that the game looks dreadful on the Nintendo Switch. In fact, most people will be more than pleased with the game’s visuals. It’s built upon the beauty of Breath of the Wild.