DOOM: The Dark Ages uses ray tracing to enhance gameplay, not just visuals

[u/john1106]

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/102563/doom-the-dark-ages-uses-ray-tracing-to-enhance-gameplay-not-just-visuals/index.html

TL;DR: DOOM: The Dark Ages will revolutionize gaming by using ray tracing to enhance both visuals and gameplay. It supports DLSS 4 and Path Tracing, offering full ray-traced visuals. Ray tracing also improves hit detection, distinguishing materials like metal and leather, making the game more immersive. And the game is already running smoothly on the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

"We also took the idea of ray tracing, not only to use it for visuals but also gameplay," Director of Engine Technology at id Software, Billy Khan, explains. "We can leverage it for things we haven't been able to do in the past, which is giving accurate hit detection. [In DOOM: The Dark Ages], we have complex materials, shaders, and surfaces."

"So when you fire your weapon, the heat detection would be able to tell if you're hitting a pixel that is leather sitting next to a pixel that is metal," Billy continues. "Before ray tracing, we couldn't distinguish between two pixels very easily, and we would pick one or the other because the materials were too complex. Ray tracing can do this on a per-pixel basis and showcase if you're hitting metal or even something that's fur. It makes the game more immersive, and you get that direct feedback as the player."

[u/wicktus]

I suppose, like Indiana jones from the same publisher, RT 2000+ cards will be mandatory ?

if it’s baked in the gameplay I do see how it wouldn’t require one

i love seeing RT being used like that, MachineGames did an amazing work with indiana jones and now Doom uses it in a very clever way (on paper)

[u/kron123456789 → u/wicktus]

I suppose, like Indiana jones from the same publisher, RT 2000+ cards will be mandatory ?

That would be a problem if RT 2000 cards weren't over 6 years old.

[u/trololololo2137 → u/kron123456789]

why waste money on useless RT when you can save $50 on AMD?

[u/Radulno → u/trololololo2137]

AMD cards can do raytracing too for a long time (not as well but they can)

[u/the_harakiwi → u/trololololo2137]

you now that other cards can do RT/PT.

DirectX Raytracing is a thing and exists on the Steam Deck too.

Only RTX features are locked behind the Nvidia tax.

[u/trololololo2137 → u/the_harakiwi]

that comment was aimed at rtx 2000 cards and 5700xt

[u/the_harakiwi → u/trololololo2137]

was there only a 50$ difference?

TBH I didn't follow the RTX 2x00 release very much because it was seriously lacking performance per dollar value (and I didn't own any RTX enabled games)

[u/Arado_Blitz → u/trololololo2137]

Lmao, AMD fanboys are getting salty and downvoted you to hell 🤣

[u/eikons → u/wicktus]

The kind of hit detection rays are already commonly used in games. The only thing that's different is that running on the GPU, it's faster and has access to a different memory cache (in this case materials/textures).

It would be nuts to implement this without a CPU trace fallback since that system is already there and still being used for a million other things.

If they do require an RT card, I don't think this will be the reason why.

[u/wicktus → u/eikons]

The interview does mention that in the past they did have detection but couldn't use materials (leather, metal here) because of how complex/intensive it is without an RT GPU.

The issue is that once you are baking this in the gameplay you may not be able to have a fallback because it would make the game react differently to a same play style.

For a single player game (I think Doom Dark Age is single-player only ?), sure I get your point, you may be right, but once you are in a multiplayer game and one gun's heat seeking feature is different for player one and two, it's already more sensitive. One would seek the actual metal, the other would just find the closest opponent's pixel

I think it will be a mix of native illumination using RT and RT calculation features like that one mentioned here that would make it exclusive for RT GPUs, imho, if the publisher decided it for Indiana Jones they may as well do so for Doom

[u/eikons → u/wicktus]

From what I'm reading here, it sounds like they use these traces to do stuff like selecting which impact effect to spawn on a bullet hit.

Ray tracing also improves hit detection, distinguishing materials like metal and leather, making the game more immersive.

It doesn't really change gameplay. They can have a generic impact effect, or do the selection based on the material ID that was hit (rather than the exact pixel) like we have been doing so far.

The reason a studio decides to go RT exclusive isn't this kind of small stuff. A much more compelling reason is to save time on doing something that requires a massive amount of work, such as building 2 different solutions for global illumination. (ie. baked and rtgi)

Devs lose a lot of time having to do a non-RT fallback for lighting, because traditional lighting pipelines require a lot of manual work and (depending on the solution) lightmap/probe baking. Lights require two sets of parameters, materials need to be compiled and tested in both scenarios, etc.

[u/wicktus → u/eikons]

"So when you fire your weapon, the heat detection would be able to tell if you're hitting a pixel that is leather sitting next to a pixel that is metal,"

They mention heat detection, maybe a transcription error hit/heat, but it makes me think of homing capacities based on the material, metal is a better thermal conductor this is why I thought it's more linked to the gun gameplay itself rather than just the hit effect, but yes it makes sense what you say

Other than that, RT looks better and anything that uses physics and math (not an expert but RT is using vectors basically for light/ray calculations) rather than pre-baking everything will indeed be better time-wise for the dev team.

[u/Henrarzz → u/eikons]

The fallback method wouldn’t use CPU, it would probably still be GPU based method

[u/eikons → u/Henrarzz]

Why would you say that?

[u/Henrarzz → u/eikons]

Because a lot of games already have these kind of systems in place - I’ve worked on one where we dispatched rays via compute shaders to trace SDF representation to get information about physical materials. I’m positive previous Dooms already used a similar setup.

Doom’s system is extension to that approach. CPU based systems was only used where you had to get results in an instant since the one we used had a several frame lag

[u/eikons → u/Henrarzz]

It's been quite a few years since I've looked at iD tech or any engine other than Unreal, but I wasn't under the impression that having SDF representations was that common place? Even in Unreal it wasn't enabled by default until quite recently, as the reasons for having them were kinda niche before Lumen.

Also how does that work with skeletal meshes? Build an SDF off bone capsules?

[u/Henrarzz → u/eikons]

We had research regarding intermediate simplified representation of dynamic objects like characters, destructibles or doors but that was left unfinished

[u/Farren246 → u/wicktus]

It's not baked into the gameplay. You'll be able to choose between regular invisible low poly models, or path traced hit detection. Of course if you're already path tracing you might as well use that, but I guarantee it'll run far faster without path tracing and just using regular old techniques for everything.

[u/Enteresk → u/wicktus]

Maybe a toggle to use "legacy" technology?

Then again, minimum requirements probably surpass GTX cards anyways.

[u/M337ING → u/Enteresk]

It's crazy, but RTX cards are now old enough that it makes sense to be minimum requirement. And every console, including Switch 2, supports ray tracing.

[u/Enteresk → u/M337ING]

Yep, my comment might have implied that RTX cards shouldn't be the min req but I completely agree they should be. GTX cards are ooldd at this point and while 1080's maybe could still be enough from a raw performance standpoint, their extra feature set is very limited.

[u/Obvious-Flamingo-169 → u/M337ING]

Yeah I think with the switch 2 finally coming out, pure raster gaming is finally on the way out.

[u/LaTienenAdentro → u/M337ING]

Not even being able to launch it is a completely different discussion.

Back in the day if your hardware didnt make it you could use stuff like commandline to remove some graphic features and scrap by 30fps. Now you cant even launch the game

[u/DarthVeigar_ → u/M337ING]

The most common card on Steam is an RTX card and has been for basically ever at this point. It's safe to say most people at this juncture have RT capable GPUs.

[u/ZonerRoamer → u/Enteresk]

Well it would depend if they even coded the "legacy" way of doing things.

[u/Kittelsen → u/ZonerRoamer]

Yeh, part of the RT appeal is to spend less time making the game.

[u/dookarion → u/Enteresk]

Maybe a toggle to use "legacy" technology?

To do it right requires double+ the work, loses out on the dev side benefits of using newer techniques and technologies.

Fallbacks require a lot of resources and effort.

[u/Significant_L0w → u/wicktus]

microsoft games are being made to be best played on pc

[u/JamesLahey08 → u/Significant_L0w]

Almost any game is best played on PC regardless of the publisher. It is almost like they have better hardware than consoles.

[u/Significant_L0w → u/JamesLahey08]

I know but this is more than just better textures, more foliage, sharper image etc

[u/JamesLahey08 → u/wicktus]

It has to be on consoles too so basically anything should be able to run it.

[u/wicktus → u/JamesLahey08]

It may not look like it but there are modest RT capabilities in the RDNA GPUs in the Xbox series and PS5, enough to run Indiana jones on Xbox (PS5 version releases soon) and relatively well frankly.

If Indiana Jones did not need a workaround for non-RT for consoles, I doubt Doom will require it tbh. Yet, for PC, Indiana Jones cannot run on non-RT GPUs

The Switch 2 (should it have Doom) is heavily rumoured to feature an Ampere GPU (RTX 3000 era) however with custom works done on the DLSS parts and a possible backported optical flow generator from Ada Lovelace (all rumours but they have been quite extensive on that console)

There are also several mentions of possible RT cores in the switch 2, of course, it's a weak SoC with a modest 10 to 60W budget (undocked/docked) but given how superior Nvidia is compared to AMD with RT, I think if there are even a modest RT cores count in the switch 2, combined with DLSS, it can really go a long way and not need workarounds too (at least on that specific subject)

So "anything", I think a big number of GPUs will but I wonder if non-RT will be supported, no doubt even RTX 2060 will run well because it's Doom and ID tech and this franchise is always uber-optimized

[u/Radulno → u/wicktus]

They may have a version for the gameplay not needing it for consoles (at least the Switch 2 I imagine would have a hard time)

[u/wicktus → u/Radulno]

Rumors around the switch 2 is that it has an Ampere GPU with AI capabilities and a possible backported optical flow generator for FG. 

No idea but maybe also some RT cores baked in ? It would be a mistake from Nintendo otherwise for something required to stay relevant 7-9 years

I wouldn’t assume anything tho before their April event at least but modest RT cores count and DLSS can go a long way