Cyberpunk 2077

Overview

Ultra+ is a comprehensive path tracing, ray tracing, and rendering overhaul for Cyberpunk 2077. It provides deep control over lighting, denoising, SHaRC radiance caching, streaming, and per-light properties through an in-game CET overlay. Ultra+ can force all lights to fully participate in path tracing, modify shadow behavior, adjust fog influence, fix particle brightness, and provides bug and consistency fixes over the vanilla game. As usual with Ultra+ mods, the emphasis is not on changing the look and feel of the game, but rather on maximizing performance and visual quality, and giving the user full control over the engine if they desire.

Ultra+ for Cyberpunk is a concept mod for the Ultra+ team, in that it is the first of our mods to include an Auto Quality mode, which scales the quality of the scene in real time in order to meet a specific FPS target. It has been working very well and is mostly unnoticeable to the user.

Requirements

Required:

Recommended for Path Tracing:

Usage Tips

All settings are controlled through the in-game CET overlay (default: ~ key)
Settings are persisted to UltraPlusConfig.ini and restored on game launch
Simple mode provides reduced options for quick setup (Raster, RT, RT+PT, PT Fast, PT Best); Advanced mode gives full control over all rendering modes and settings
Auto Quality dynamically adjusts quality to maintain your FPS target
When the game changes denoiser (e.g. photo mode), gradient/AntiFirefly settings switch automatically
3077 Compatibility mode available for Ultimate Vanilla+ users

Rendering Modes

Ultra+ supports multiple rendering modes, from traditional rasterization to cutting-edge path tracing. Each path tracing mode uses a different NVIDIA technology stack with distinct trade-offs.

Raster — Traditional rendering, no ray tracing. Ultra+ makes minimal changes in this mode because the engine settings are mostly fixed for raster. Performance is mostly controlled through the game menu.
RT — Ray tracing (reflections, shadows, lighting). Ultra+ makes minimal changes, plus several bug fixes to shadows, translucent materials, and lights. Performance is still mostly controlled through the game menu options.
RT+PT — Very similar to ray tracing, with added bounce lighting from NVIDIA ReBLUR global illumination. This mode is essentially a hack and has been very popular for AMD users who can’t quite run path tracing. It also works for NVIDIA, however it does not work with Ray Reconstruction and works with the NRD denoiser only.
Vanilla — As close to vanilla path tracing as possible, with optionally some of the fixes from Ultra+. PT21 differs from Vanilla with several performance and ghosting noise improvements.

PT16

Uses NVIDIA ReBLUR naive path tracing from the Cyberpunk ~1.63 era. PT16 is the fastest path tracing method and produces a very consistent image throughout the game — even more so than ray tracing. The lighting is not as detailed as newer modes, but if PT20 is too demanding for your hardware, PT16 is a great alternative.

PT20

Uses NVIDIA ReLAX naive path tracing combined with RTXDI, introduced in Cyberpunk 2.0. PT20 is widely regarded as the fastest path tracing method with very minimal downsides. Lighting is generally physically accurate, making it an excellent option for lower-end cards to experience high quality path tracing. Only a few areas of the game exhibit boiling noise, which is gradually being addressed by newer DLSS versions. This mode is also often preferred by AMD users.

PT21

Uses NVIDIA ReSTIR GI combined with RTXDI and SHaRC, introduced in Cyberpunk 2.1 and still the game’s current default path tracing. ReSTIR is a newer method that uses importance sampling to resolve scene detail, rather than the rays-and-bounces approach of PT16 and PT20. This method contains some lighting errors (highly scene-dependent) due to incomplete integration with the lighting engine.

NextV3

Uses NVIDIA ReGIR GI combined with RTXDI and SHaRC — a rendering path exposed in the engine but not available in the vanilla game. Ultra+ fully enables this mode, which corrects the lighting integration issues present in PT21. The SHaRC being overly dark in some scenes has also been fixed in recent Ultra+ versions. NextV3 is generally held as the best way to experience Cyberpunk 2077 by the community — only slightly slower than PT21, but far more consistently accurate across the entire game. From the lighting changes in Ultra+ v8.3.0 onward, NextV3 has been affectionately heralded as “NextV4” by the community.

Denoiser Presets

NRD DLSS — Standard NVIDIA NRD denoising for DLSS users
NRD AMD — Standard NVIDIA NRD denoising tuned for AMD users
RR Clean — Cautiously tunes NVIDIA ReLAX to do less work, which allows DLSS to do more of the denoising. DLSS contains newer denoising techniques than the 3+ year old ReLAX. This approach yields a sharper image when using newer DLSS models. This is the best balance for image stability, noise, and sharpness.
RR Sharp — A more aggressive disablement of NVIDIA ReLAX, allowing DLSS to do even more of the work, with a focus on image sharpness. It’s generally very good, however may cause minor path tracing artifacts (ghosting) in some areas.
Vanilla — The game’s default denoiser configuration

SHaRC Radiance Cache

NVIDIA SHaRC is a radiance cache technology that adds information to the scene so the denoiser (DLSS) has to do less work to fully resolve the image. In the vanilla game, SHaRC is implemented too darkly in some scenes, which actually removes path tracing information, giving DLSS less to work with. This causes additional boiling and ghosting noise in certain areas. See the NVIDIA SHaRC documentation for a technical overview.

Since v8.0.0, Ultra+ has a workaround for this issue which has continued to improve, resolving boiling issues in the vanilla game (the most notable being boiling on the ceiling of your main H10 apartment) so that SHaRC is generally the correct brightness for the scene. v8.3.0 and higher also attempts to address this by standardizing how light nodes input information into the SHaRC radiance cache.

Off, Off (Cache Only), Vanilla, Fast, Med, High, Insane
Off (AMD Pink Tracing) option for AMD users
Optional frame blending disable for maximum image stability (recommended)

Lighting Presets

Vanilla — Identical lighting balance (direct lights, GI, bounce lighting, sky, etc.) as the vanilla game
Next — Close to vanilla, but slightly brightens bounce lighting, which can help reduce boiling noise
Natural — Evenly darkens all lights to give a more subdued and natural-looking lighting style that can look very nice especially with realistic LUTs
Bold — Slightly brightens some lighting endpoints to give more pronounced lighting, which can work very well with stylistic LUTs
Flat — Sets all lighting endpoints to a flat 1.0 (vanilla is closer to 1.2), which gives a very even and realistic look. This could be close to path tracing “ground truth” or reference image, if you are seeking the most physically accurate lighting
PT20/PT21 — Similar to Next, the lighting is tuned to yield the highest image stability for these modes, with minimal changes but less emphasis on lighting accuracy
Stronger Bounce Lighting toggle boosts sky and global diffuse

Per-Light Modifications

Ultra+ uses Redscript to optionally modify individual light properties at runtime:

Force all lights to participate in path tracing (GI, reflections, specular, fog, transparents)
Force all lights to cast PT shadows (local shadows, contact shadows, RT contact shadow range)
Volumetric fog influence control (Vanilla, Double, Triple, Force 30/50/100%)
Roughness bias clamping for sharper specular
Light radius clamping to prevent over-brightening
Extended light streaming distance (+1000m)
Smoke/steam particle brightness fix (diffuseWrapFactor, backLightingFactor)

General Bug Fixes

PT Hair Lighting Fixes (with optional Preem Hair support)
Disappearing NPCs Fix — fixes NPCs that were just there going missing or changing when you turn around
Black Bar on Left Side of Screen Fix — fixes the annoying black moving bar down the left side of the screen in vanilla path tracing
PT Missing Reflections Fix
Dark SHaRC Fix — fixes SHaRC being overly dark and increasing path tracing noise (boiling, ghosting — see SHaRC section above for details)
PT Slow Updating at Screen Edges Fix — when motion blur is disabled, lights can resolve slowly at the edges of the screen, possibly due to a motion vector bug in the vanilla game. This fix enables motion blur at a very low setting which, unlike vanilla motion blur used as an effect, imperceptibly smooths motion while fixing the issue. We at Ultra+ believe motion blur should emulate how a camera works, not be used as a visual effect.
Fix Smoke/Steam Brightness for PT — originally a separate mod called Ultra Fog, now integrated into the main mod as an option
PT Rain/Particle Quality — enables an in-engine option to better integrate particle (smoke, steam, rain) colour into path tracing, except in circumstances where it doesn’t work correctly, where Ultra+ invisibly disables the effect
Missing Shadows on Lakes/Rivers — fixes many large bodies of water not having shadows from bridges and buildings
Disappearing Distant Rain — increases the engine budget for rain, allowing rain and wet materials to draw into the distance
Disappearing Distant Shadows — increases the engine budget for shadows, allowing shadows to draw farther into the distance
LUT Extended Black Floor Fix — reduces the LUT floor from being clamped at 0.001 (a raised black floor) to effectively zero
LOD0 Faster AI Ticking — increases animation smoothness for NPCs and vehicles closest to you
Streaming Improvements — changes the frame timing for loading and unloading sectors and in-game assets to be better suited to smooth streaming for PCs. Especially helps reduce hitching at sector boundaries and while driving.
Skin Specular Fix — slightly adjusts skin specular levels to be more suitable for path tracing
Glass Transparency Fix (optional) — fixes transparent materials appearing too white in the vanilla game
VRAM Warnings — Ultra+ will let you know when you’re about to run out of VRAM. When low on VRAM for a sustained period, Cyberpunk will slow down then crash to desktop

Configuration

Setting	Location	Description
Mode	Ultra+ tab	Select rendering mode (Raster through NextV3)
Quality	Ultra+ tab	Fast, Med, High, Insane, Auto
SHaRC Quality	Ultra+ tab	Off through Insane, with frame blending toggle
Streaming	Ultra+ tab	Controls asset streaming frame timing (Vanilla, Low, Med, High, Insane, Auto). Higher settings improve smooth loading of sectors and assets, reducing hitching at boundaries and while driving.
Denoiser	Ultra+ tab	NRD/RR tuning presets
Lighting	Ultra+ tab	Lighting balance presets
Force All Lights Are PT	Fixes section	Forces all lights to fully participate in path tracing
Force All Lights Cast PT Shadows	Fixes section	Forces local + contact shadows on all lights
Fix Smoke/Steam Brightness	Fixes section	Reduces particle over-brightness for PT
Update Lights Influence on Fog	Fixes section	Controls per-light volumetric fog contribution
Remove Roughness Bias	Fixes section	Remove smoothing from all PT lights (not recommended for RT)
PT Hair Lighting Fixes	Fixes section	Adjusts hair for PT lighting
Disappearing NPCs Fix	Fixes section	Prevents NPC despawn on camera turn
Glass Transparency Fix	Fixes section	Fixes white glass artifacts
PT Slow Update Fix	Fixes section	Fixes dark screen edges with PT
3077 Compatibility	Tweaks section	Ultimate Vanilla+ compatibility mode
Stronger Bounce Lighting	Tweaks section	Boosts sky and global diffuse
FPS Target	Quality section	Target FPS for Auto Quality
Auto-Confirm Menu Changes	Settings tab	Auto-apply Cyberpunk menu changes
Auto-restore Graphics Menu	Settings tab	Restore game graphics menu settings on game launch
Theme	Settings tab	UI color theme (Ultra+, Cyber Night, Default)
Language	Settings tab	11 supported languages
UI Scale	Settings tab	Scale the Ultra+ window
Enable Console Output	Settings tab	Show Ultra+ log output in the CET console
Enable Tooltips	Settings tab	Show helpful tooltips on hover
Show FPS Overlay	Settings tab	Display FPS counter in the Ultra+ overlay
Show VRAM in Overlay	Settings tab	Display VRAM usage in the overlay
Display VRAM Warnings	Settings tab	Warn when free VRAM is low
Game Menu Snapshot/Restore	Settings tab	Snapshot and restore individual game menu pages (Sound, Controls, Gameplay, Graphics, Video, Interface, Key Bindings, Language, Accessibility)

Optional Debug Panel

By placing an empty file called debug in the main UltraPlus CET folder (no restart necessary), Ultra+ will enable a Debug panel that lets you play with many of the engine’s hidden settings in real time. This is generally only recommended for advanced users and troubleshooting, or when directed to do so by an Ultra+ team member.

The Debug panel exposes low-level engine toggles including separate denoising, RTXDI gradients, shadow optimizations, spatiotemporal DI, PT fallback lighting, emissive triangle lights, environmental lights, path traced skylight, RT global shadows, raytraced shadow cascades, foliage shadows, local shadows, ReSTIR GI controls, boiling filter, NRD rejitter, and more. A search filter is provided to quickly find specific settings.

Other Features

Game Menu settings snapshot/restore system
11 languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, plus Pirate and Brainrot)
Theme support
GPU and VRAM detection via RED4ext