Icarus: How to Enable Ray Tracing

In the latest from RocketWerkz, Icarus casts players into the role of Prospectors exploring a harsh planet to extract resources, complete missions, and most of all, survive. The game features alien creatures, exotic materials, and a thoroughly unforgiving environment, employing futuristic sci-fi and realistic survival elements. Players can also experience the vivid world of Icarus with better lighting and reflections thanks to Ray Tracing. To up the ante, prospectors are also in a race against the clock, as players must finish their tasks in time to get back to the orbital station. They will be left behind if they fail to get off-planet during this window.

Besides the need to complete as much as they can during the allotted time frame, players have plenty more obstacles during their time on the surface. Between difficult weather conditions and violent wildlife, prospectors face no easy task in exploring all that Icarus has to offer. Just as pioneering such a landscape in real life would come with its many trials, so does Icarus test its players’ resolve. Icarus’ quality graphics only add to its speculative realism, showcasing both the beauty and the brutality of the planet.

Icarus boasts such great visuals in part due to its use of ray tracing, a graphical rendering technique that mimics how rays of light work in reality. Ray tracing in games has only been supported in the last few years, enhancing many titles’ immersive atmospheres. Some older games have even added ray tracing support, allowing players to experience familiar worlds in a whole new way. However, depending on the game, some players may have difficulty activating the feature. Fortunately for those playing Icarus, enabling ray tracing for a boost in graphics is an easy fix.

How to Enable Ray Tracing in Icarus

Should players have trouble enabling ray tracing in Icarus, they can solve the issue in two ways. The first approach is to run Icarus directly from the Steam library rather than the desktop shortcut. Doing so will allow a dialog box to pop up, asking whether to run the game in Direct X 11 or Direct X 12. From this window, select “Play Icarus (DX12 RTX 2070 or better)” and continue to open the game. Once launched, go to the Display portion of Settings, then select Ray Tracing. Next to “RTX Enabled,” change the settings from OFF to ON.

Another way to enable ray tracing in the game is by adjusting the launch options in Steam. Enter the Steam library and right-click on Icarus to open its Properties. In the General section, the Launch Options will appear under two checkboxes. Type “-dx12” into the textbox below it, allowing the game to launch in Direct X 12 even from the desktop shortcut. Same as the other option, make sure Ray Tracing is enabled in the game’s settings once it has launched. Once either of these methods has been used to enable ray tracing, players should be able to experience the game’s graphics at their very best.

Icarus is available on PC via Steam.

About The Author