Ray tracing is a wonderful graphical thing to witness in gaming, especially if you're either a sucker for pretty reflections or if you just want to make use of the photo modes that are becoming all the more popular in video games. Nvidia yesterday flexed its RTX muscles with some cutscenes and gameplay of the newly announced Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War with turned ray tracing on.

For those unaware, ray tracing is a rendering technique used in video games to simulate light in a far more realistic way. The best way of showcasing this is often to throw in a crapload of puddles and glass for the light to reflect off. In a new video from Nvidia, we get to see what the upcoming game from Activision will look like with ray tracing with an Nvidia RTX ready graphics card turned on.

As you can see, the clock reflects light realistically, light diffuses across the floor, the water looks lovely, and weapons have that metallic sheen. The rendering itself is actually rather subtle rather than being showcased front and center, but that just makes it all the more pretty. Cyberpunk 2077 is another upcoming game with ray tracing capabilities, but it puts a heavy emphasis on the rendering technique as previously teased.

In addition to the fancy pants cutscenes shown in the trailer for the above video, there are also a few quick cuts featuring new gameplay clips. While it's not a lot, there seems to be enough to determine that this is going to be an action-packed title.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War was announced last month and is to be a direct sequel to the original Black Ops game in the series. A cinematic trailer showcasing a cutscene from the game was revealed at Gamescom's opening night and introduces fans to what will be a series of branching narratives that lead to multiple endings.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War is said to be launching this November on PS4, PC, and Xbox One. It'll also be heading to Xbox Series X and PS5 when they launch with the ability for players to upgrade the current-gen versions.