Does Ray Tracing Do Anything in Beast of Reincarnation?
Very little you can see, and in places it removes reflections instead of adding them. Measured at 2% in a quiet scene and up to 7% elsewhere. Turn it off.
Almost nothing you can see — it costs about 2% of framerate in a quiet scene and up to 7% elsewhere, and in places it switches off screen-space reflections without replacing them, so turn it off.
Where this is being asked · Two places at once, which is what makes this the strongest-sourced answer on the site. It is asked repeatedly in the launch bug megathread by players who turned ray tracing on, saw no difference or lost reflections, and could not tell whether the setting was broken — and it is the setting people go looking for first when the game runs badly.
Evidence
The answer, broken into claims
A grade describes sourcing, not truth. Inferred means we concluded it and the reasoning is shown; unverified means someone asserted it and nobody stands behind it.
CorroboratedRay tracing makes little visible difference and in places removes reflections.
Measured by BenchmarKing on 2026-08-04 and independently described by players in the launch bug megathread. Two unrelated methods, same outcome.
UnverifiedIt costs about 2% of framerate in a quiet scene and up to 7% elsewhere.
BenchmarKing, one tester and one machine, measured per setting. Nobody has published a second measurement to check it against.
InferredTurning it off is the right default.
Our conclusion from the measured cost weighed against the visible difference. No source states a recommendation for you.
§01
What the measurement says
BenchmarKing tested every graphics setting individually rather than as presets, which is what makes the numbers usable. Ray tracing came in at roughly 2% of framerate in a quiet scene and up to 7% in busier ones, for a difference the tester describes as barely visible. That is a small cost in isolation — it is a bad trade because the thing you are buying is close to nothing.
§02
It can make the picture worse, not just unchanged
The finding that matters more than the percentage: in places ray tracing disables screen-space reflections without putting ray-traced reflections in their place. The result is a scene with fewer reflections than the setting turned off. That is also what players in the bug megathread describe — ray tracing appearing to do nothing visible, or removing reflections — and it is why "does this setting even work" keeps being asked rather than answered.
§03
The recommendation
Off. There is no scenario in the measured data where it is the right call: you pay frames, you rarely see a difference, and in some scenes you lose reflections you had. If you want the frames back for something visible, the same measurement pass found shadow resolution and lighting to be the two settings actually worth spending on.
§04
The limits of one measurement
This is one tester, one machine, one set of scenes, and percentages of a framerate rather than absolute numbers — a different GPU class could land elsewhere, and a scene neither of us has stood in could cost more. What raises it above a single opinion is that the player reports and the measurement agree on the visible outcome from two completely different directions.
Expiry condition
What would have to change for this answer to be wrong
An answer about a live-service game without this is an answer with a hidden expiry date.
A patch changes what the ray tracing option renders — particularly if it stops disabling screen-space reflections — or a second tester measures a materially different cost on different hardware.
Citations
Every source, with its date
A complaint posted before 30 July 2026 describes the playtest, not the game you bought, and a source whose publication date nobody captured cannot show that it postdates launch either. Both are flagged rather than quietly mixed in.
The measured cost of ray tracing specifically — about 2% of framerate in a quiet scene, up to 7% elsewhere, for a barely visible difference — and the finding that in places it disables screen-space reflections without replacing them. Measured per setting rather than per preset.
That players are repeatedly reporting ray tracing as doing nothing visible or as removing reflections, independently of any benchmarking. Cited for the reports, not for a cause. Read 2026-08-05.
Related questions
No. It costs 2–7% of framerate for a barely visible difference, and in places it disables screen-space reflections without replacing them.
