Doom RTX released; mod bringing real-time ray tracing to the classic Doom game via the Vulkan API [UPDATE: Fake]


Modder ‘doom_rtx’ has released a mod that all owners of NVIDIA’s Turing GPUs will appreciate. As its title suggests, Doom RTX brings real-time ray tracing effects to the first Doom game. The modder has used the Vulkan API and you’ll need at least an NVIDIA RTX 2060 in order to run it.

According to the modder, this remaster demonstrates the features of RTX. Alongside the new ray tracing effects, Doom RTX comes with improved texturing, as well as other changes and improvements.

In order to run Doom RTX, you will need an original game/iwad. Both the Steam and the GOG versions are currently supported. You will also need an NVIDIA RTX GPU. All graphic cards below them will not be able to run this or will display incorrect lighting/glitches and very low framerates.

Now while this is not as advanced as the official mod for Quake 2, it’s a mod I’ve been really looking forward to. I’m also looking forward to a similar ray tracing mod for Doom 3. Do note that Doom RTX is more advanced than your typical Reshade Ray Tracing mods.

Going into more details, Doom RTX uses ray tracing for global lighting effects, including realistic reflections, refraction, shadows, ambient occlusion and global illumination. In other words, this is a must-have for all Doom classic fans.

The modder has released some screenshots to showcase the new ray tracing visuals of classic Doom. In these screenshots, you will immediately notice the better lighting effects (as well as the light bouncing effects).

You can download the first version of Doom RTX from here.

Have fun!

UPDATE:

According to reports, this mod is based on the banned Doom Remake 4. Some users claim that the “texture_lights.wad” file from both releases is the same. As such, there is a chance that this mod may not feature proper ray tracing effects. After examining two videos, we found some similarities and some differences between Doom Remake 4 and Doom RTX. Therefore, we are issuing this update to inform you about the possibility of it being fake. On the other hand, the modding team claims that it has not stolen anything. Moreover, the modding team claims that this mod is indeed using ray tracing effects.

UPDATE 2:

Upon further investigations, it appears that this mod is indeed based on Doom Remake 4, and does not use real-time ray tracing. This mod uses GZDoom which does not feature any ray tracing capabilities. This very same mod was uploaded on ModDB back in June 2019 and was taken down by its moderators. However, this time the ModDB moderators were not quick enough to delete this new entry. So yeah, while this mod improves visuals, it basically borrows a lot of stuff from other mods. Not only that, but it does not feature any ray tracing effects. Bummer.