Don't just copy preset numbers. Here is what the sliders actually do under the hood:
Version 0.33 separates Global Illumination (light bounces) from Ambient Occlusion (contact shadows).
The headline feature is the vastly improved spatial-temporal denoiser. The grainy "fireflies" in the shadows are almost entirely gone. The image stabilizes much faster when you stop moving, and the ghosting behind fast-moving objects (like dragons in Skyrim or cars in GTA V) has been drastically reduced.
If you are playing a modern AAA game with native ray tracing, no—ignore this shader.
But. If you have a backlog of 50+ classic PC games, an aging GTX 1070 or RTX 2060, and you want to feel like you just installed a $700 graphics card upgrade for free, then Reshade Ray Tracing shader RTGI 0.33 is still the king. Reshade Ray Tracing shader RTGI 0.33
It represents a unique moment in PC history: When a single hobbyist developer democratized ray tracing three years before NVIDIA’s marketing team claimed they invented it. It isn't perfect. It has noise, ghosting, and edge artifacts. But when you first walk into the Bannered Mare in Skyrim and see the firelight naturally wrap around a wooden beam, you will forget it's a "fake."
Install it. Tune it. Play your favorites like you’ve never seen them before.
As of 2026, how does an old shader stack up against modern tech?
| Feature | RTGI 0.33 | NVIDIA RTXDI (Path Tracing) | AMD FSR 3 + Native GI | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Hardware Required | GTX 900 series + | RTX 2060+ (Struggles) / 4070+ | RX 6000+ | | Accuracy | Medium (Screen Space) | High (World Space) | Medium-High | | Installation | 10 minutes (Manual) | Built-in to game | Built-in to game | | Ghosting | Moderate (TAA) | Low (DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction) | High (FSR 2.2) | | Best Use Case | Old DX9/DX11 games | New AAA releases | Cross-platform indie games | Don't just copy preset numbers
The Bottom Line: You don't use RTGI 0.33 to beat Alan Wake 2. You use it to make Mass Effect 2 look like it was released yesterday.
Let’s get this out of the way early: RTGI 0.33 is not path tracing. It doesn’t have infinite bounces, and it doesn’t know what’s behind your camera or around a corner.
What it does do is brilliant: it traces rays in screen space using the depth buffer and color data from your current frame. Those rays bounce once (or twice, depending on settings) and accumulate over time to create surprisingly natural indirect lighting.
In plain English: shadows get softer, dark corners get a little color bleed from nearby walls, and light fills rooms the way it should. The headline feature is the vastly improved spatial-temporal
Version 0.33 refines that core idea with better temporal stability, reduced edge artifacts, and a smarter sampling pattern.
To understand the hype, you must first understand the acronyms. RTGI stands for Ray Traced Global Illumination. In real-world terms, this is the light that bounces off a red wall and tints the white floor pink, or the soft shadow under a table that isn't directly lit by the sun.
Reshade is a generic post-processing injector. It can add SMAA anti-aliasing or color filters to virtually any DirectX 9/10/11/12 or Vulkan game.
RTGI 0.33 is the specific build of a shader written by developer Pascal "Marty McFly" Gilcher. Unlike the official "Reshade 5.0" raytracing demo, RTGI 0.33 uses ReSTAR DI (Stochastic Ray Traced Ambient Reflection with Directional Incidence). In layman's terms: It screenspaces a limited number of ray samples per pixel to simulate how light bounces.