You don’t need anyone to tell you just how incredible Crimson Desert looks. From the draw distance and texture quality to the effects and realistic weather conditions, it’s probably one of the best-looking games of the year. But thanks to a new preview video by Digital Foundry, we get a sense of just how good it can look on PC.
Pearl Abyss provided the site with footage of the game running on an AMD Ryzen 7900X3D 12-core CPU, a Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU, and 32 GB DDR5 RAM. V-Sync was enabled and FSR set to native AA with the Ultra preset selected (which also enabled Advanced Weather Effects and Ray Tracing). Digital Foundry notes that the frame rate stays mainly at 60, and while some scenes are slightly lower, it’s still a work-in-progress build.
Ray traced diffused global illumination is present and liberally employed. While it’s per-pixel, it applies to all lights, even torches inside buildings. Reflections appear to mix screen-space and ray tracing depending on the on-screen elements and distance, but the water physics are arguably the real star. You really have to see it for yourself to appreciate the sheer detail.
Perhaps even crazier is that Ultra isn’t the highest preset. That honor belongs to Cinematic. How much better the game will look on that remains to be seen, but aside from those, you still have the Low, Medium and High presets to choose from.
Crimson Desert launches on March 19th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. While details on console performance remain to be disclosed, Pearl Abyss has confirmed PS5 Pro support at launch.
