Digital Foundry details Crimson Desert ray tracing features and native 4K performance targets
Developers used RX 7900 XTX to capture video footage.
Digital Foundry has published a first tech-focused look at Pearl Abyss’ Crimson Desert, using capture footage supplied by the developer. The footage includes full PC specs and in-game settings, showing the title running at native 4K on the Ultra preset with ray tracing enabled.
Pearl Abyss chose last-gen Ryzen and Radeon for the tech demo
For this capture, Digital Foundry says Pearl Abyss used the PC equipped with Ryzen 9 7900X3D (12 core) and Radeon RX 7900 XTX. I would say the choice of the GPU is quite interesting because it is a last-gen GPU series that AMD seemingly abandoned when it comes to new features like FSR4/Redstone. And yet, we know that this game will feature Redstone features, as we reported .
© AMD That said, sending captured footage running on last-generation hardware to some of the most pixel-focused reviewers suggests the developers are confident in both performance and visual quality. In fact, the footage was captured at 4K with FSR enabled, which likely means FSR 3.1 since the Radeon RX 7900 XTX does not support FSR 4.
The preview also outlines key rendering features tied to Pearl Abyss’ in-house BlackSpace Engine . Digital Foundry states the game uses ray-traced diffuse global illumination across outdoor and indoor scenes, including time-of-day changes and local light sources such as torches.
© Digital Foundry 
© Digital Foundry Digital Foundry also calls out ray-traced reflections, with examples in standing water and reflective interior surfaces. The discussion suggests a hybrid approach where screen-space reflections are combined with a ray-traced pass depending on scene content and distance.
© Digital Foundry 
© Digital Foundry 
© Digital Foundry Outside ray tracing, the footage focuses on systems that impact image stability in open-world scenes, including distant vegetation rendering and animation, plus physics-driven interaction and destruction. Digital Foundry highlights shoreline water behavior that appears to simulate volume and backflow rather than relying on simple height-only deformation.
© Digital Foundry 
© Digital Foundry Crimson Desert is currently listed for release on March 19, 2026, and Pearl Abyss is taking pre-orders across PC and consoles. On the PC upscaling side, NVIDIA has confirmed DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and DLSS Ray Reconstruction support for launch. AMD has also confirmed Crimson Desert as an FSR Redstone title, including Ray Regeneration as part of the feature set, which we covered earlier.
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