As promised Crytek have released the "DX11 Ultra Upgrade" patch for Crysis 2 and also the high-resolution texture pack is now available. The update intros DX11 as well as graphical improvements to not only the DX11 version of the game, but the stock DX9 version. There are three packs available, patch 1.9 enables DX11 support but there will be separate downloads on top of patch 1.9 in the form of "DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade," DX11 Tessellation Pack," and "High Res Textures."

The DX11 patches will obviously give higher-fidelity visuals, but the patch also includes graphical and performance improvements under DX9. After the patch 1.9 is installed, DX9 users will gain real-time local reflections and contacts shadows. DX11-based gamers will gain hardware tessellation, parallax occlusion mapping along with various shadow, water, particle, depth of field and motion blur enhancements.

Patch 1.9 also includes over twelve gameplay tweaks as well as multiplayer bug fixes.

Is this patch too late? Personally, I think so. The console-centric development of Crysis 2 has really shunned a lot of the high-end gamers away from it and a little DX11 patch (to me) won't bring them back. Maybe if it was built from the ground up on PC, developed around DX11 and had absolutely amazing scaling and efficiency built in, things would be different. But, at least DX11 is available for the game finally.

Crysis 2 Patch 1.9 includes:

• Added Contact Shadows

• Added DX11 benchmark level

• Added DX11 support for Crysis 2 (the following features only work when downloading the optional DX11 package here):

• - Tessellation + Displacement Mapping

• - High Quality HDR Motion Blur

• - Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra

• - Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field

• - Parallax Occlusion Mapping

• - Particles Motion Blur, Shadows and Art Updates

• - Water Rendering improvements and using Tessellation + Displacement Mapping

• Added Realtime Local Reflections

• Added support for Higher Res Textures Package

• Added various new console variables to whitelist

• Fixed bullet penetration, which had been broken by a bug introduced with the DLC 2 patch

• Fixed issue in MP where player stats weren't always saved at the end of a game

• Fixed issue in MP where player stats would sometimes randomly reset

• Fixed issue with MP time played statistic, which would sometimes be too low on leaderboards and in stats

• Fixed issue with JAW rocket not firing through window's containing broken glass

• Fixed rare issue where a user could not access MP with a valid CD key if they had previously used an invalid CD key

• Improved advanced graphics options menu

• Improved anti-cheat measurements: fixed exploit which could prevent vote kicking working against a user

• Improved multi-GPU support

• Improved Tone Mapping

• Re-added possibility to enable r_StereoSupportAMD via config file (unsupported)

The patch is available here.