War Thunder major Hornet's Sting update adds Ray Tracing for AMD and intel GPUs

War Thunder has been updated with the first major expansion of 2025. Titled Hornet’s Sting it adds in Ray Tracing support for AMD and Intel GPUs. There's but coming though.

But…not in the Native Linux version. Ray Tracing, and multiple upscalers, are only available via DirectX 12 and not their Vulkan renderer. So unless you play with Proton, you're getting left further behind on this one. That said, Proton doesn't appear to actually work properly for it right now either.

At least on my AMD Radeon 6800 XT system, the latest Proton 9.0-4 makes the latest update unplayable with graphics missing all over the place. And then going into a match, it gives multiple errors and the game will quit. Trying with Proton Experimental, and it's the same problems.

So right now for War Thunder, you might have to stick with the Native Linux version to at least have it working, just without all the recent fancy graphical additions and upscalers.

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There's quite a lot of new content in this update from new aircraft like the F/A-18 Hornet and others, new naval and ground vehicles, three graphically overhauled maps, a new "Maneuver and limits mode" for jets that "allows you to perform much tighter maneuvers and to get the little-but-so-needed nose authority to launch a missile", some interface updates, a UAV Picture-in-Picture Mode and more. One I'm quite happy about is the addition of new tank guns sounds, to help make them more unique.

I do really enjoy the battles in War Thunder, but seeing Linux get left behind like this is quite frustrating. And their spectator camera has been left feeling so broken for many years at this point, which makes it seriously annoying when waiting around or trying to see what friends are doing if you're with a crew when you're out.

See all the changes in their release announcement.