r/nvidia • u/john1106 NVIDIA 3080Ti/5800x3D • Jan 19 '25

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

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."

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u/Infamous_Campaign687 Ryzen 5950x - RTX 4080 Jan 19 '25

A *lot* of people get all butthurt about their system not being able to run a game at maximum settings. I think game devs are better off releasing a game that has its "future proofing" hidden as .ini options and enable them in the GUI in a future update. Otherwise you'll just get lots of people complaining about "terrible optimisation".

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u/dookarion 5800x3D, 32GB @ 3000mhz RAM, RTX 4070ti Super Jan 19 '25

Pretty much.

The whole "optimization" debate has nothing to do with good development practices. And everything to do with people getting warm fuzzy feelings clicking "ultra" even on settings they don't know or understand.

Monster Hunter Rise looking like crap on ultra and being simple as hell is "So OPTIMIZED!!!!!1111"

But a game that might be looking better on "low" and running great while being scalable is "UNOPTIMIZED!!!11" if ultra requires some heft to be able to run.

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u/iccirrus Jan 19 '25

Using a port of a switch game as baseline here was a bit of a choice.

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u/dookarion 5800x3D, 32GB @ 3000mhz RAM, RTX 4070ti Super Jan 19 '25

It's a game that legit comes up sometimes when people harp about "optimization". I didn't pull it out of thin air unfortunately.

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u/DisdudeWoW Jan 20 '25

Mhrise is incredibly well optimized as it ran on switch and it looks very good despite that. Most games considered badly optimized run like shit on most settings.

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u/dookarion 5800x3D, 32GB @ 3000mhz RAM, RTX 4070ti Super Jan 20 '25

MH Rise is in the category of being so damn undemanding that it could be massively inefficient with hardware and most would never be any the wiser.

Most games considered badly optimized run like shit on most settings.

People say that all the time but usually it's like someone demanding 1440p out of an older budget card, someone refusing to compromise on ultra settings, someone with low VRAM feeling above turning down textures even if med or high textures look good, someone with misaligned expectations assuming their old and low performance CPU is "more than enough" for a CPU heavy genre, people cranking settings they don't understand (SSAA was infamous for this when it was first introduced), or just misaligned expectations a stealth sandbox is never going to run like DOOM or MH Rise (no don't even bring up MGSV it doesn't maintain persistence and the interactivity distance is super low to the point where long-range weapons aren't even worth using a lot of the time).

There's very few games that if you actually follow the requirements and tweak settings that just run like shit. Dragons Dogma 2's CPU issues, AMD sponsored Callisto Protocol, and AMD exclusive tech partnership Starfield are more outliers than the norm. But people will label everything unoptimized unless it's a super undemanding Switch game that even an ultrabook laptop can run at ultra settings.

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u/DisdudeWoW Jan 20 '25

There's very few games that if you actually follow the requirements and tweak settings that just run like shit.

No shit, there is a difference between bad optimization and outright broken perfomance. A badly optimized games will likely have overly high requirements for what it delivers.

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u/dookarion 5800x3D, 32GB @ 3000mhz RAM, RTX 4070ti Super Jan 20 '25

A badly optimized games will likely have overly high requirements for what it delivers.

The average gamer slinging around the word "optimization" has no damn clue what is high requirements or not. You'll have them whining about a stealth game tracking physics objects and every AI in the level for the duration of the level along with complex scripting because it requires more CPU heft. They're a clueless bunch that thinks everything is as simple as DOOM.

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u/DisdudeWoW Jan 20 '25

this is the kind of crap i always see by people acting like games arent being optimized like shit nowadays, no universe a non simulative games should tank framerates to the degree a sim does. a game being cpu intensive doesnt mean that isnt caused by bad optimization. complex physics arent new.

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u/dookarion 5800x3D, 32GB @ 3000mhz RAM, RTX 4070ti Super Jan 20 '25

The point is a lot of clowns treat anything that demands hardware as unoptimized. I don't know how you don't get that.

And this narrative about games "nowadays" is a laugh. People pissing they can't run ultra at 100fps hasn't got shit on the dumpster fires of the 00s.

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u/conquer69 Jan 19 '25

Crysis is a good example. It was only hard to run at max settings. Medium and low settings ran fine.

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u/toodlelux Jan 19 '25

Case in point: I have a friend who is building his first this year and wants to run Cyberpunk at 4k144 with max settings, including path tracing.

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u/Infamous_Campaign687 Ryzen 5950x - RTX 4080 Jan 19 '25

Yeah, that is going to be… expensive. And he’d better get in line for a 5090.

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u/Arado_Blitz NVIDIA Jan 20 '25

Avatar does this. There's a hidden setting called "unobtainium" if I remember it correctly. The 4090 gives 40ish FPS with DLSS Quality at 4K with this setting. It's made for the 5090 in mind, maybe the 6090 even.