Thoughts on ray tracing...

[Captain Keen]

I just played Eternal with ray tracing enabled for a couple of hours. It gave me a major drop in frames, from about 185 fps to 95 fps. However, my eyes got used to it, and I have to say, the use of ray tracing here is pretty well done. There are lots of subtle ways that it makes an impact. For example, you can now see the slayer (with your custom skin) in reflections. Though, since I was using the demonic slayer, I noticed the flame animation wasn't actually active on the skin. Nonetheless, it was a cool surprise, and some of the environments felt like they came to life in a new way. Colored lights and their bounce, fractured glass, and shiny surfaces all look noticeably different (and better).

 

Overall, I'm not sure if ray tracing will be the main way I play the game going forward, but I definitely enjoyed the work id has done here. I love how smooth it is in regular mode, especially since I have a 240 hz monitor, but even with ray tracing enabled it still runs pretty well. No major frame hitches or anything like that. It's not quite on the level of Metro Exodus or Control, but I'd recommend giving it a try if you have a RT card. I tried it both without DLSS and with, and I recommend using quality mode or balanced mode.

 

I also like some of the other updates, like added kill animations. A new Arachnotron glory kill especially caught my eye.

[HavoX]

Shit, now I REALLY wish I had a GeForce RTX 3080. Seriously, FUCK YOU SCALPERS!

[Archvile Hunter]

It looks great, and with DLSS enabled I get about the same performance as I would with RT+DLSS turned off.

[chemo]

The effectiveness of the RT is going to vary due to the diverse locations, but I'm very satisfied with it overall. The lighting and shadows and stuff looked great already, so an upgrade to the limited cubemaps and SSR was the only thing that felt missing to me.

 

The Doom Hunter Base in particular I think is a great showcase for this tech. That level is filled to the brim with shiny/glossy surfaces, and as a result several whole rooms have all of their floors, walls, and ceilings give off almost mirror-like reflections.

Edited June 30, 2021 by chemo

[Zemini]

I can run it but not with 4k at the moment.  I still think my 4k looks better honestly.

[Captain Keen]

11 hours ago, chemo said:

The Doom Hunter Base in particular I think is a great showcase for this tech. That level is filled to the brim with shiny/glossy surfaces, and as a result several whole rooms have all of their floors, walls, and ceilings give off almost mirror-like reflections.

 

You're absolutely right. Doom Hunter Base and the UAC Atlantica Facility probably have the biggest WOW factor, at least right out of the gate. By comparison, something like Blood Swamps is a lot more subtle.

 

I've played a little more with ray tracing enabled, and I have to say, I do think this is my preferred way to play Eternal now. The frame rate is lower, but it's hardly noticeable, and the game does look significantly better (and different) in enough places that it's worth the hit to performance. Especially since DLSS is also there to help. It's still a very smooth and fast paced experience.

 

I've noticed some other changes with this update outside of ray tracing, too... like enemies fighting each other in places where it didn't happen before (Mars Core is an example). The added death animations are all good.

[Martin-CAI]

My sum: it runs better than I expected and it makes the game even prettier than it normally is, but I'll eventually turn it off because of the substantial frame drops that I get in crowded situations (RTX 2070 super). 

[Captain Keen]

10 hours ago, Martin-CAI said:

My sum: it runs better than I expected and it makes the game even prettier than it normally is, but I'll eventually turn it off because of the substantial frame drops that I get in crowded situations (RTX 2070 super). 

 

If I may ask, which resolution do you use... 1080, 1440 or 4k? Or something else?

[Martin-CAI]

34 minutes ago, Captain Keen said:

 

If I may ask, which resolution do you use... 1080, 1440 or 4k? Or something else?

 

2560x1080 (21:9), 144hz monitor. While with rtx off I always get 144fps+ without exception, with rtx on and dlss set in quality I may get drops that hit 100fps. But at the end of the day, it's a matter of preference. Personally, in a race between smoothness and graphic quality, in a game like Doom, I'll always go for smoothness.

[Captain Keen]

1 hour ago, Martin-CAI said:

 

2560x1080 (21:9), 144hz monitor. While with rtx off I always get 144fps+ without exception, with rtx on and dlss set in quality I may get drops that hit 100fps. But at the end of the day, it's a matter of preference. Personally, in a race between smoothness and graphic quality, in a game like Doom, I'll always go for smoothness.

 

Fair enough. I'm 1920x1080 240hz. I got a pretty major drop, from about 180-190 to around 100. However, even in crowded areas, it didn't go much lower than that, so it's still a relatively smooth experience. If it dropped into the 60-70s that would be too much for me. As is, it's nice to have the option, but the ray tracing is definitely a significant improvement in some areas and I'm already getting used to it.

[BabyGiggles]

Ray Tracing also dipped my performance, by like 80 frames and even if I leave it on for a while suggested by midnight a Doom Eternal youtuber it still ran 80 frames. Issues aside, it's looks great. 

[smeghammer]

A revelation.

 

I'd not bought a decent gaming PC for - well, ever, really. So about 3(?) years ago I had a bit of cash (and I'd just bought Doom 2016 in a Steam sale... and that did not run at all - 5fps? - on my i7 Dell box) and I'd been following the stuff about nVidia and their then-upcoming RTX 2060 and so I treated myself to an Alienware A51 laptop with an RTX 2070 chipset and 32GB RAM. 

 

Sweeeeet!!

[Immorpher]

I do enjoy ray tracing as well! I find that enhanced lighting and shading is often more effective in visual appeal than increasing polygon counts. Amid Evil, for example, looks great with ray tracing. There's also a spiritual remake of Quake in the works, called Nail & Crescent, based upon Quake 2 RTX and it looks great too (much better than Quake 2 RTX itself).

[RaikohZX]

I am a bit disappointed that it's reflections only, and inconsistent at that. Doom Hunter Base is filled with wetter and shinier parts, and then right next to that are more matte surfaces that reflect absolutely nothing but generic point lights that an RTX reflection will show doesn't even exist. Even the wet and nasty Super Gore Nest is filled with "this is super reflective" and "this doesn't reflect anything at all". I honestly think the game would've benefited from a larger suite of RTX like enhanced lighting and so forth, but just this by itself is kinda.. eh?

 

It supplements the visuals and that's just about it. I've already played the game plenty of times, not exactly a big reason to dive back on in.

[Captain Keen]

1 hour ago, RaikohZX said:

I am a bit disappointed that it's reflections only, and inconsistent at that. Doom Hunter Base is filled with wetter and shinier parts, and then right next to that are more matte surfaces that reflect absolutely nothing but generic point lights that an RTX reflection will show doesn't even exist. Even the wet and nasty Super Gore Nest is filled with "this is super reflective" and "this doesn't reflect anything at all". I honestly think the game would've benefited from a larger suite of RTX like enhanced lighting and so forth, but just this by itself is kinda.. eh?

 

Yeah, I'll admit it's not the greatest implementation of ray tracing in the world. It's not Metro Exodus (especially after the last update), or Control. But I found what it did affect really impressed me, more so in some levels than others.

 

It's a free update, and easy to toggle on and off, so at least we have options and it doesn't cost us anything. Overall it was better than I expected and I've enjoyed playing with it enabled.

[Doom-X-Machina]

A lot of hype over very little.

[Mattatsu]

I switched my PS5 to balanced mode (2160p at 60fps).

 

The ray tracing was a nice little touch, but I noticed some slight dips in some of the very big fights, mostly in the master levels, and I’d rather have no slowdowns over the little detail that RT adds. I also kinda prefer the higher resolution… Just makes the game I’m used to look better everywhere.

 

I don’t have a 120hz monitor to try out the 120fps setting though.

[Captain Keen]

I turned my shadow settings from ULTRA NIGHTMARE to HIGH, which has seemed to give me an extra 10-15 fps. I'm now well over 100 fps even with ray tracing enabled.

 

Also, I've noticed there seems to be enemy infighting now. As in, occasionally it happens organically? Or at least there are more pre-planned places for it now? Has anyone else noticed this?

[Quasar]

21 hours ago, Captain Keen said:

I turned my shadow settings from ULTRA NIGHTMARE to HIGH, which has seemed to give me an extra 10-15 fps. I'm now well over 100 fps even with ray tracing enabled.

 

Also, I've noticed there seems to be enemy infighting now. As in, occasionally it happens organically? Or at least there are more pre-planned places for it now? Has anyone else noticed this?

That's always been the case - if monsters are far away from you and can't get attack tokens for a while because you have a lot of other enemies near you, they'll "stay busy" by starting to "play fight" each other. Somtimes this is quite to your advantage as it keeps them distracted. I say play fight because they're not at all capable of actually damaging each other in Eternal, which is a step back from 2016 in that regard. Maybe they turned it up a bit though, I don't think I've played enough to be a judge of that for certain.

[Captain Keen]

2 hours ago, Quasar said:

That's always been the case - if monsters are far away from you and can't get attack tokens for a while because you have a lot of other enemies near you,

 

Interesting. I'll admit I never really noticed it before except a couple of times. I wonder if it's been changed to be more common, or happen closer to the player. I feel like I see it pretty often now while playing.

[Koko Ricky]

I'm a bit disappointed that it's just reflections. Granted, they're gorgeous and add to the realism, but when I heard DE would receive a ray tracing update, I was expecting global illumination, and perhaps an omission of the self-illumimating entities, whose glaring brightness looks out of place, particularly in heavily shadowed areas.

 

Of course, calculating light bounce, radiosity, diffusion, etc., is still extremely costly, but why not add it in anyway? GPUs will be able to do 4k 120fps at the highest quality soon, so why not future proof the graphics now? 

[omx32x]

44 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

I'm a bit disappointed that it's just reflections. Granted, they're gorgeous and add to the realism, but when I heard DE would receive a ray tracing update, I was expecting global illumination, and perhaps an omission of the self-illumimating entities, whose glaring brightness looks out of place, particularly in heavily shadowed areas.

 

Of course, calculating light bounce, radiosity, diffusion, etc., is still extremely costly, but why not add it in anyway? GPUs will be able to do 4k 120fps at the highest quality soon, so why not future proof the graphics now? 

i wished the plasma gun shots had reflections but in all honest i dont see much of a reason to play games using ray tracing for now visually its basically the same but with a huge cost in performance

unless the game is something like minecraft or its being made with ray tracing in mind like metro the ray tracing will never see its place to shine 

[Koko Ricky]

I guess after all this time, full resolution, full-featured ray tracing is still only viable with very low polygon counts. I suspect this will be the decade we finally see it completely implemented, but then again I also made this claim 20 years ago when Doom 3 was in production...

[omx32x]

5 hours ago, GoatLord said:

I guess after all this time, full resolution, full-featured ray tracing is still only viable with very low polygon counts. I suspect this will be the decade we finally see it completely implemented, but then again I also made this claim 20 years ago when Doom 3 was in production...

honestely i wished the industry focused more in image quality anti aliasing could be a lot better these days but i guess that wont matter too much in the future when 4k and eventually 8k monitors become the norm

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Game runs at 120 fps in 1080p on 3060TI and up, 1440p if you are using a 3070. No where close to running at 20 fps. Just need to make sure you have DLSS on otherwise the default anti-aliasing will tear apart your GPU.

[RaikohZX]

Technically speaking Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition pulls off full raytracing on a fancy triple-A game, so it's not like it's impossible for this stuff. Most studios just want to push a constrained amount of it for NVIDIA sponsorship I presume, or so it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the game. It'd be a lot of work to give Doom Eternal's lighting a complete overhaul just for raytracing, when the entire point of the update was moreso for the Xbox Series and Playstation 5's sakes.

[scalliano]

Running the game on Ultra/RTX Ultra with a 2070 Super and a 7-year-old CPU at a solid 1080p60.

 

As it happens, DLSS covers up a multitude of sins.

[Captain Keen]

6 hours ago, scalliano said:

Running the game on Ultra/RTX Ultra with a 2070 Super and a 7-year-old CPU at a solid 1080p60.

 

As it happens, DLSS covers up a multitude of sins. 

 

I'm also a 2070 Super, though with a newer CPU.

 

At 1080p, I have settings set to ULTRA except for shadows, which is HIGH. I'm getting about 100-120 fps on average. Turning shadows to ULTRA lowers me about 10-15 fps. DLSS is set to QUALITY. I did play around with the settings a bit to find the right mix. No DLSS gives me the occasional hitch, which is annoying, so from my POV it *is* necessary. #FirstWorldProblems

 

With ray tracing off, ULTRA everything is over 200fps. Often 210ish, and I'm on a 240 hz monitor.

 

On 7/8/2021 at 3:42 PM, RaikohZX said:

Technically speaking Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition pulls off full raytracing on a fancy triple-A game, so it's not like it's impossible for this stuff. Most studios just want to push a constrained amount of it for NVIDIA sponsorship I presume, or so it doesn't get in the way of the rest of the game. It'd be a lot of work to give Doom Eternal's lighting a complete overhaul just for raytracing, when the entire point of the update was moreso for the Xbox Series and Playstation 5's sakes.

 

I think you're right. And Metro Exodus got a big second release for the ray tracing, not that the first pass was bad. But obviously it was a priority for them, and it looks incredible. That game isn't quite as fast paced as Eternal, so it's a whole different beast despite also being a modern FPS. I get about 80-90 fps in Exodus with raytracing and DLSS, which is more than worth it. The game was never as smooth as Eternal.

[HalcyonClass]

Ray Tracing really isn't my thing, I care about performance while keeping the goriness of it all, I just don't like raytracing. Its DOOM we don't need hyper realistic reflections. we need better demon and blood textures

[Charlie Love]

Raytracing will eventually be the defacto standard in lighting so it is what it is. For me the real star of the show is DLSS. DLSS 2.2 looks like something that will finally take us out of the blurry/ghosting anti-aliasing dark ages that FXAA, SMAA, and TSAA have thrust upon us in an age where MSAA is no longer viable.