Doom Eternal new-2

Don’t expect real-time ray tracing effects in Doom Eternal anytime soon

Back in July 2019, we informed you about Doom Eternal supporting real-time ray tracing effects. However, it appears that PC gamers will not be able to enjoy these effects anytime soon. As id Software’s Marty Stratton claimed, Ray Tracing isn’t currently a top priority for the team.

As Marty Stratton told Digital Foundry:

“So we actually haven’t talked about that at all. And we, quite frankly, haven’t spent a ton of time. The team basically did some initial implementation and exploration about a year ago. At that same time, we had so much that we wanted to do with the game still.

Our tech team is the biggest fan of new tech. Som it was a little hard to pull everybody off of that because it was the shiny new toy but when we’re talking about getting the game out there and getting out as close on time as possible and at the highest polish quality, we kinda had to pull back that effort.

It is something that they [tech team] are like literally just about ready to start looking at it again. And they actually have some interesting ideas. I don’t want to go too far down on that path cause who knows what exactly we’ll do. However, there is more that you can use the technology for than just reflections, shadows and the real-time lighting.”

Stratton concluded that id Software has some pretty cool ideas that will both make the game look better, and make it easier for developers to create new ray traced content.

Doom Eternal releases on March 20th!

Doom Eternal Engine Upgrades: id Software Reveals New Details!

55 thoughts on “Don’t expect real-time ray tracing effects in Doom Eternal anytime soon”

    1. It’s called priorities. It’s better to polish and release a great, playable game than shiny crap because you spend too much time on features minority of players will even use.

      That kind of stuff can be implemented after the game hits the shelves.

          1. There are tons of papers on that matter but you have to precise what open standard you mean?

          2. they are just enabling/help in typical ray tracing calculations.But i meant about other aproaches to “Ray tracing” like Sphere Tracing which don`t give aliasing or very fast Cone tracing similar to SVOTI. Those teqchinques were already`ve been usaed in 2015 Claybook.

          3. AFAIK stuff like SVOTI exist because RT was too demanding on hardware before. Now RT core are being pushed inside a GPU as a fundumental function game engine developer no longer need to create their own implemantation that is unique only to their engine. Take DXR (and vulkan equivalent of it) as a base to start and create RT effect from there.

        1. Not from what I heard. Apparently the amount of content is staggering compared to 2016 and they are finding it difficult to optimize.

  1. I don’t like this colorful UI either, they’ve said that you can customize it so we will see about that. As for map editor, there is almost zero chance that coming. SnapMap wasn’t very popular and I doubt Bethesda will allow iD releasing feature full editor.

      1. So I was like totally like literally going to roll my eyes like at them for you know like literally being salty but ohmigod I so then like realised they’d like literally enjoy this infantile like manner of like you know communicating. Literally. /s

      1. Almost every FPS fan is excited about Doom Eternal, and some people are upset about the absence of reflective-performance hog water puddles, like it’s the only thing that matters… RT Is not a priority, that doesn’t make a game any better, if it’s a sh*t game, it gonna be sh*t, and if it’s good, it will be good with or without it and of course, most people don’t give a sh*t about RT for now, deal with it

      2. On a game like Doom Eternal, I’d love to see the setup needed to run this game on high settings with RTX turned on. I’ve got a newish $2600 computer I doubt could handle that. As amazing as the tech is, how could you blame ID at this point for not going hard on a feature 99.9 percent of gamers won’t use for a few years?

    1. Let’s wait to see how the game looks in night time before making any assumption, last time everyone went mad about RED Engine graphics, it ended with one of the most brutal downgrades ever (i love TW series don’t get me wrong)

    1. No, it’s the future, but it’s going to take a lot of time. It is still a very resource intensive rendering method. Even in 5 years it’s still going to be used with limitations, but we should hopefully see those limitations be less and less as we move forward.

      Calling it a gimmick only shows that you don’t understand what ray tracing is and what it can actually do for games.

  2. Nvidia has to pay if it wants this implemented. Bethesda isnt going to waste money on RTX implementation for a few 2080Ti players that can actually run RTX effects properly.

  3. The game is shaping up nicely to easily be game of the year, They don’t need distractions before release. If anything they should just add it as a post launch feature for the upcoming Nvidia Ampere.

  4. I think the last Doom and this one from what Ive seen so far – have plenty of reflective and bright surfaces already (and a lot of harsh reds). RT might have made these games really hard on the eyes.

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