Bad information for anybody hoping to play Doom Eternal in all its real-time ray tracing glory when it comes out on March 20th, as id Software’s studio director Marty Stratton has confirmed that the crew have solely simply began to take a look at what they will do with the flamboyant pants reflection tech. As a consequence, it’s trying more and more unlikely that Doom Eternal can have ray tracing help at launch, and it might be a number of months earlier than it’s ultimately patched in.
In an interview with Digital Foundry at a current preview occasion, Stratton stated: “So we haven’t actually talked about [ray tracing] at all, and we, quite frankly, haven’t spent a ton of time [on it]. The team basically did some initial implementation and exploration about a year ago, but at that same time, we had so much that we wanted to do on the game still.”
He added: “Our tech team are the biggest fans of new tech, so it was a little hard to pull everyone off of [those early ray tracing tests] because it was the shiny new toy, but when we’re talking about getting the game out there, and getting it out to as close to on time as possible and at the highest, polished quality, we had to pull back on those efforts.”
It’s possible that Doom Eternal will nonetheless get ray tracing help in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later, although, as Stratton went on to say that the crew are “literally just about ready to start looking at again”. He wouldn’t put an estimate on how lengthy it’d take to see that help come via, as he stated the crew had been nonetheless very a lot at an early concepts stage for the way it might be applied. However, it does sound prefer it might be much more bold than the ray tracing tech we’ve seen in different games up to now, comparable to Control, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus.
“There’s more that you can use the technology for than just the reflections and the shadows and the real-time lighting and that kind of stuff,” Stratton stated, however he stopped wanting saying precisely what that may appear like.
Admittedly, the information isn’t wholly stunning. Even when Stratton and his crew confirmed that Doom Eternal would certainly have ray tracing help in an interview with Giantbomb at E3 2019, he additionally stated that it wasn’t notably excessive on their priorities listing. Instead, the crew had been specializing in extra vital issues like total efficiency and cross-platform stability, moderately than ensuring it had ray tracing. Nvidia have by no means publicly introduced something about Doom Eternal’s ray tracing help, both – which is odd, contemplating they prefer to make a giant music and dance about all their upcoming ray tracing releases.
Either manner, it’s one more one in every of this yr’s huge ray tracing games that gained’t have its ray tracing help obtainable at launch, giving us one much less motive to go for one in every of Nvidia’s new RTX Super graphics playing cards versus AMD’s glorious, however utterly ray-tracing-less Radeon RX 5600 XT and RX 5700 XT playing cards, for instance. Indeed, the one different confirmed ray tracing games due out in 2020 at the moment are Watch Dogs: Legion, and ultimately Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Dying mild 2, however we nonetheless don’t know whether or not these can have ray tracing help at launch, both. Minecraft may also be getting ray tracing help in some unspecified time in the future this yr, however you’ll solely have the ability to make the most of it within the Windows 10 model of the game – and even then I’ve considerations over how properly it’s going to run on lower-end RTX playing cards given my Minecraft RTX demo PC struggled to hit 60fps at 1920×1080 with an RTX 2080 Ti once I previewed the game on the finish of final yr.
Still, right here’s hoping we’re not left ready too lengthy for a ray traced Doom Eternal, as a result of judging by RPS video bud Matthew’s newest gameplay footage above, id’s newest demonic shooter is about to be one hell of a great-looking game.
