Reshade Ray Tracing Shader Rtgi 0.33 〈Recent | 2027〉

Not every game benefits from screen space ray tracing. Flat, high-contrast games look terrible. Here are the proven winners:

As of 2026, how does an old shader stack up against modern tech?

The Bottom Line: You don't use RTGI 0.33 to beat Alan Wake 2. You use it to make Mass Effect 2 look like it was released yesterday.

Why not version 0.34 or 0.40? Community consensus holds that RTGI 0.33 strikes the perfect balance between visual accuracy and performance.

The headline feature is the vastly improved spatial-temporal denoiser. The grainy "fireflies" in the shadows are almost entirely gone. The image stabilizes much faster when you stop moving, and the ghosting behind fast-moving objects (like dragons in Skyrim or cars in GTA V) has been drastically reduced. Reshade Ray Tracing shader RTGI 0.33

RTGI 0.33 is the peak of screen-space ray tracing. Pascal Gilcher has polished this shader to the point where the remaining artifacts are fundamental limitations of the technique — not bugs or poor coding.

If you enjoy tinkering with visuals, replaying old favorites, or just want to see what “what if this game had bounce lighting?” looks like, install it today.

Just don’t expect path tracing. And definitely don’t expect 120 FPS. But for the 90% of games that will never see a native RTX update? RTGI 0.33 is the next best thing — and sometimes, it’s even better.

Have you tried RTGI 0.33? Drop your favorite game to use it with in the comments.
— Until next frame, keep tracing.

The ReShade RTGI 0.33 update, released by Pascal Gilcher (Marty McFly) in August 2022, serves as a significant technical bridge between standard screen-space effects and full ray tracing. Technical Summary Not every game benefits from screen space ray tracing

The RTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) shader is a post-processing tool that adds dynamic, realistic lighting to games by simulating the way light bounces off surfaces. Version 0.33 was a major milestone, appearing after an 18-month development gap. Key Features in v0.33

Motion Vectors Support: This addition significantly improves temporal stability, reducing the flickering or "ghosting" artifacts often seen in moving scenes.

Diffuse and Specular GI: RTGI accurately models both diffuse (soft, matte) and specular (shiny, reflective) global illumination.

Hardware Independence: Unlike official RTX implementations, RTGI works on non-RTX video cards, including older GTX series (10xx and 16xx), because it operates using depth data rather than dedicated ray-tracing hardware.

Compatibility: It supports nearly all modern APIs, including DirectX 9, 10, 11, 12, OpenGL, and Vulkan. Performance Impact Why not version 0

Ray tracing, even when emulated through ReShade, is highly demanding:

Frame Rate Cost: Users often report significant performance hits. For example, a GTX 1080 Ti may see frame rates drop from ~110 FPS to ~70 FPS when RTGI is active.

Optimization: You can mitigate the performance cost by enabling "half-resolution" settings within the RTGI menu or decreasing the "ray amount". Installation Requirements ReShade Tutorial | How to use the RTGI Shader (0.25+)

While there isn't an "official" manual that comes with the download, the RTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination) 0.33 shader by Pascal Gilcher is one of the most transformative but complex tools available in ReShade.

Because version 0.33 introduces significant changes (especially regarding ambient occlusion and temporal stability), here is an interesting, practical guide on how to get the most out of it.

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Reshade Ray Tracing Shader Rtgi 0.33 〈Recent | 2027〉

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