We’re huge fans of taking retro games and adding new graphics features to them, so you had to know that when [Sultim Tsyrendashiev] released his ray-traced Doom engine, we would have to cover it. Now this does break with tradition — instead of running Doom on every conceivable platform, this version requires an AMD or Nvidia ray tracing capable card. On the other hand, the spirit of Doom is certainly alive, as ray-traced Doom has already been demonstrated on the Steam Deck. Check out the video below for a demo, and come back after the break for more info.
The most exciting part of this graphical feat may be the RayTracedGL1 library that “simplifies the process of porting applications with fixed-function pipeline to real-time path tracing.” Besides Doom, there’s also been demos made of Serious Sam and Half-Life 1. There’s even experimental Linux support! We managed to compile and test it on our system, running a 6700 XT and Fedora 35 with bleeding edge Mesa. There are a few visual glitches to work out, but it’s an outstanding project so far. The only complaint we have is that it’s based on prboom, not the still-maintained GZDoom, though with enough attention who knows where the project will go. If this leaves you hungry for more, check out more retro-upgrades, or Doom on more devices.
This reminds me of playing Wolfenstein back in 1995 on my EISA Bus 486. I assume it was a DOS version. It sure was a lot of fun back then!
It does have an option for 320×200 with a CRT filter. I don’t normally like CRT filters but this if the bloom is set to excessive, it does feel like you’re sat back in 1995 with the CRT burning a hole in your retina while sat in the darkened room playing PC games. Fun times.
Technically is nice, but I don’t like the results. Art was chosen with technical restrictions in mind. This is like when old games are played with perfectly sharp pixels, the quality of the artwork suffers considerably.
Does anyone else get motion sick when playing games such as Doom and Wolfenstein?
Playing, no. Watching someone else play, yes.
Depends on the frame rate for me. 30 and below, I can get sick. 60 and above I’m fine.
VR is even worse, it has to be above 90 FPS or I can’t last more than a half hour.
Only one that did that for me was Descent.
I did get sick when i played VR Doom with goggles for like half an hour. I bet it was all that swinging in the Doom while walking, because other games, like Superhot, didn’t do that at all and i could play as long as i wanted. Non-VR games haven’t caused me anything like that ever.
I think I did get slightly queasy back when I first played them, but soon got used to it. (And back then we thought we were fancy if we got more than 20FPS)
It’s the same with VR, at first I found fast movements would make my stomach lurch, but after a bit of exposure I got used to it.
Technical it’s really nice, but it’s too dark to really play the game. The light sources are missing to play the game with raytracing. It’s nice for new levels that you build for this engine, but all old are bad. So it’s makes few sense to not just use another engine.
The mod also gives the player a flashlight for dark areas.
It’s amazing what a bit of shading and lighting can do to the atmosphere of a game. Brilliant! I was more a duke nuke ’em guy than doom though. I think its the strip bars that got me. lol
Now I want to see someone do this with the Marathon games.