In addition to the story campaign, Black Ops Cold War will bring an arsenal of Cold War weapons and equipment into the next generation of Black Ops Multiplayer combat, and an all-new co-operative gameplay experience with Zombies.

In pure Black Ops style, Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War fuses elements of 1980s pop culture through a mind-bending conspiracy story, where deception and subterfuge are the norm in the gripping single-player Campaign. In this sequel to the original Call Of Duty: Black Ops, players encounter historic figures and learn hard truths as they battle around the globe through iconic locales like East Berlin, Turkey, Vietnam, Soviet-era Moscow, and more. As elite operatives, players attempt to stop a plot decades in the making as they follow the trail of a shadowy figure named Perseus, who is on a mission to destabilize the global balance of power and change the course of history. Beyond the Campaign, players will bring a wide selection of Cold War weapons and equipment into the next generation of Multiplayer combat and an all-new Zombies experience.

The title features cross-play support across current and next generation systems with cross progression across all modes. Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will also offer a Battle Pass system and deliver a steady stream of free post-launch content, including multiplayer maps and modes, Zombies experiences along with a robust schedule of in-game community events.

NVIDIA has released a pair of videos that showcase Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and some of the next-gen technology the game supports. One video is showing on/off with ray tracing and the second a side by side of NVIDIA DLSS.

Ray Tracing - Realistic Shadows, Realistic Depth 

The first video features on/off swipes showcasing ray-traced shadows from the sun/local light sources and ambient occlusion. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War featuresDirectX 12 Ultimate ray-traced ambient occlusion, local shadows, and sun shadows that are RTX-accelerated for more immersive gameplay.  

Notice how the shadows create contiguous silhouettes with contact hardening and high resolution details without any aliasing or self-shadowing. Ambient occlusion creates a sense of depth to the environment to appear more life-like. This shading technique determines how much light should fall onto objects in the scene.

The video was captured at 4K resolution, Ultra Settings, with DLSS on a GeForce RTX 3090. 

DLSS – Beautiful, Crisp Images, Higher Frame Rates 

The second video is a split screen video with DLSS on and off. The interesting part is in the upper corner in the form of a frame counter. While it is hard to distinguish between the two for image quality, the frame counter with ‘DLSS on’ is usually about double the side with DLSS off.  NVIDIA DLSS boosts frame rates up to 85% at 4K on GeForce RTX GPUs, for the fastest, highest-fidelity Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War experience.

The video was captured at 4K resolution, Ultra Settings, with DLSS performance mode on a GeForce RTX 3080. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a Tech Showcase

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is absolutely loaded with NVIDIA tech, including:

• RTX-accelerated ray-traced ambient occlusion, local shadows, and sun shadows effects for more immersive gameplay.
• NVIDIA DLSS to boost frame rates while generating beautiful, crisp game images.
• NVIDIA Reflex to reduce system latency.
• NVIDIA Ansel in the campaign enables you to frame and snap unique hi-res screenshots. 
• NVIDIA Highlights in Multiplayer, ensuring your most entertaining in-game moments are automatically recorded and saved. 

NVIDIA Delivers Developer Driver and Nsight Graphics Support for Vulkan Ray Tracing

In case you missed it,  yesterday the official Khronos Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions were finalized, and NVIDIA released a new NVIDIA Developer Driver which offers support. Our goal is to include support for these extensions in an upcoming Game Ready Driver and Studio Driver, aligned with the support for ray tracing in the Vulkan SDK in mid-December. In addition, Nsight Graphics 2020.6 was released today with support for the Vulkan Ray Tracing extensions.

Bringing ray tracing into Vulkan has been a multi-year effort by many companies and NVIDIA has taken an active leadership position in each stage of its evolution. We were elected to chair the Vulkan ray tracing subgroup at Khronos, we contributed the design of our vendor extension to Khronos to help the Vulkan working group make rapid progress, and we shipped drivers for the provisional version of the Vulkan ray tracing extension to enable developer feedback for the subgroup. 

Black Ops Cold War will also support and build on the hit, free-to-play experience Call Of Duty: Warzone. Black Ops Cold War includes shared progression features with Warzone, adding brand new inventory items that can be used in both Black Ops Cold War and Warzone. Warzone players will still have access to all of their Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare content, including Operators and Weapon Blueprints previously earned.

Starting today, fans who pre-order or pre-purchase select digital versions of Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will instantly unlock digital rewards, including Black Ops Operator Frank Woods for play in Call Of Duty: Warzone and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare now, and receive early access to the Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Multiplayer Open Beta. Open Beta dates to be announced soon. For further pre-order and pre-purchase information and the full list of digital retail options and next generation bundle offerings, please visit here.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC on Battle.net.