Battlefield 5’s first live update is surprisingly small

The first live update for Battlefield 5 is out now. According to the patch notes, it includes some notable tweaks for high-end graphics cards on PC plus some needed changes to the game’s Airborne mode.

Battlefield 5 now offers ray tracing for GPUs that support the technology. The technique is commonly used in pre-rendered computer graphics shown in movies and TV shows. The team at Digital Foundry was given early access to a demo showing off the tech, which you can see in the video embedded below. Ray tracing is currently offered by Nvidia, but only on specific RTX-class devices.

One major gameplay change is a tweak to how anti-aircraft fire impacts players leaping into action during some sections of Battlefield 5’s Grand Operations. It seems that flak guns were being used to take out large groups of players in the Airborne segments of those multi-session matches before they had a chance to hit the ground. Now that the changes have been made, perhaps we’ll see some improvement to the balance in that game mode.

Another major change clears up a server-wide bug that would prevent players from reviving each other after they were wounded. No word yet on the related clipping bugs, players falling through the map, or the other issues pointed out in our multiplayer review.

Developers from DICE are currently running an ask-me-anything session on Reddit. There they have acknowledged that they’re working on nerfing the game’s bombers, which are fairly overpowered right now.