War Thunder Adds Swedish Airplanes And New Ray Traced Illumination System

A cold wind is blowing in War Thunder's latest update, which takes players to a new Scandanavian-themed naval map, as well as introducing a new Swedish aviation tech tree and a big improvement in graphical quality.

Update 1.95: Northern Wind adds a full tree of Swedish airplanes to the game, from biplanes like the Svenska Aero J6B Jaktfalken II all the way up to the J32B Lansen jet fighter. The Swedish military also gets a pair of ground vehicles, and there are a dozen new vehicles, of all types, for other nations as well.

The update also adds a pair of new maps for naval battles, one located off the New Zealand coast and one in more frigid Scandanavian waters. That second map has all sorts of obstacles for boats to maneuver around -- I mean, just look at this image and imagine a high-speed chase while darting between islands and under bridges.

The big change to the game coming with this update, however, is War Thunder's new Ray Traced Global Illumination system, available for PC players using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX or any DirectX 11 video card and Xbox One players. The new system makes in-game lighting more "realistic, immersive, natural in appearance while making sure that it suits the time of day and weather on the battle map." Also, it provides better-looking explosions, which gives it an enthusiastic thumbs-up from us!

Learn more about Update 1.95: Norther Wind on the War Thunder site.