Stray has no ray tracing? No way, it’s just well hidden on the PC. Here’s how to make the cyberpunk hit even more beautiful.
The cyberpunk cat adventure Stray is one of the most beautiful games of 2022. In our test, it was bursting with atmosphere and a game world that is second to none. Since it is a PS5 title and the game world is covered in reflective puddles and neon lights, everything about Stray actually screams “ray tracing”. In the menu, however, all ray tracing features are deactivated by default.
But there is a trick you can use to activate (st)raytracing (that had to be) on the PC – and it might even point to an official update.
How to activate the hidden raytracing for Stray
To enable ray tracing on your PC, all you need to do is add DX12 support to your startup options
- Select Stray in your Steam library with a right click.
- Go to Properties
- In the “General” tab you will find the “Launch Options” box
- Enter “-dx12” (without quotes) in this field and close the window.
- If you now start Stray, the game will automatically run with raytraced shadows, ambient occlusion and reflections.
- Beware: On the PS5 there is of course no diversions
The fact that ray tracing can be activated in Stray in this way has to do with the fact that the appropriate DirectX library DXR (DirectX Raytracing) is part of DirectX 12. Under DirectX 11, the effects are therefore missing in Stray, but games can also use DirectX 12 without offering ray tracing. So this trick does not work by default on all games that offer multiple interfaces including DX12.
There is one big catch: the performance
Currently, the switch to DirectX 12 causes severe performance drops due to ray tracing effects. You have to say goodbye to 60 FPS even at low resolutions. Upscaling methods such as AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS to ensure better performance do not exist at the same time.
The hidden function could also point to a planned ray tracing update for Stray, which has already been implemented in the code and which will hopefully offer ray tracing options as well as FRS and DLSS support. We’ve checked with the developers and will keep you posted on this!
Have you played Stray yet? Do you miss ray tracing? Would you play it again with a graphics update? Tell us in the comments!
