In our game, there are three large groups of locations: air battles, mixed battles (a.k.a. “tank” locations) and naval environments. The prototypes for War Thunder locations are the most diverse corners of our planet - from the African desert to snowy Russia, from the Pacific islands to the American plains. For each group of locations, different times of the day are provided, from the first dawn rays to late at night, as well as the most diverse weather conditions - clouds, haze, rain, storm, blizzard, and so on. The nature and properties of global illumination for each location in any weather and time of day is an important feature of the picture, which gives the realism and involvement to what is happening in the battle.

Our Ray Traced Global Illumination technology provides natural, photorealistic illumination in the entire game world for every battle, automatically adjusting to the time of day and weather set by the mission conditions. Such illumination dynamically responds to in-game events - moving vehicles, tracks appearing on the ground, the movement of leaves and grass, explosions and the destruction of objects, creating naturalistic shades, sky illumination and reflective illumination.

The realism of the picture has grown, but the load on the gaming hardware has not changed. Is it possible? Yes! You will not notice significant changes in system performance either on PC or on consoles. As the update is released, only “medium” and “low” quality settings will be available. High quality settings for global illumination are expected next year.