Thanks to CD Projekt Red’s ongoing support, the Phantom Liberty expansion, and cutting-edge technology like Path Tracing and DLSS, Cyberpunk 2077 remains one of the most visually impressive games you can play on a modern PC. Built on the company’s internal Red Engine, it’s a technical marvel that’s open to modders, allowing them to tweak and tune the game to their liking.
NextGen Dreams, the developers behind the hyper-realistic DreamPunk mod, have released a new video showcasing the latest version, DreamPunk 2.1. This mod aims to give Cyberpunk 2077 a photorealistic look, and the results are simply breathtaking. However, access to the mod comes at a price, sitting behind a paywall.
DreamPunk 2.1 dramatically overhauls how the game handles various graphics and lighting effects. The mod enhances Indirect Lighting, Light Diffusion, LUT saturation, and more, resulting in visuals that are incredibly close to real-life photographs. Some of the shots in the video are genuinely movie-like in their realism, showcasing the impressive power of this mod.
The mod runs on top of the game’s impressive Path Traced lighting mode, RT Overdrive, with DLSS 3.7.10 enabled on a GeForce RTX 4090, all running in 8K resolution. It’s hard to believe that some of the footage isn’t a real photograph! While the video doesn’t provide a detailed performance breakdown, the fact that it was captured at 60 FPS suggests that Frame Generation is also being utilized.
DreamPunk 2.1 showcases some truly stunning environments, with vehicles, buildings, and foliage looking like something straight out of a movie set in the distant future. However, as impressive as it looks, it’s important to remember that achieving this level of realism requires a lot of work.
Many photorealistic mods, including DreamPunk 2.1, tend to showcase their technology with overcast or cloudy weather for a reason. This turns the sky into a giant single lightbox or diffusion box, which is less demanding for producing accurate soft shadows and other lighting details. It’s a technique that makes it easier to trick the brain into thinking the images are real.
Despite this, the achievements of NextGen Dreams are remarkable. To their credit, the DreamPunk 2.1 showcase video also includes shots captured with blue skies and at night, demonstrating the mod’s versatility and showcasing its ability to achieve a high level of realism even in diverse lighting conditions.
