Doom Eternal released over a year ago and is still one of the best looking FPS games around, but publisher Bethesda teases that a visual upgrade is just around the corner. It’s scheduled to appear during Nvidia’s Computex keynote later today and with Hell reportedly looking better than ever, it’s likely official ray tracing support is on the way.
While the game launched with standard lighting techniques and has relied on mods to simulate ray tracing, the feature was originally announced during Doom Eternal’s reveal in 2019. During Gamescom, 2020, lead engine programmer Billy Khan explained that “it’s not just about making visual fidelity improvements,” which is why it’s taking so long to implement.
“It’s also about the gameplay,” Khan continues. “What can we do with ray tracing to make the games better? And that’s where we’re investing quite a bit of time, to make sure that we don’t just make the reflections look better, we want to make sure that we use it in a way that enhances the gameplay.”
Nvidia’s Computex keynote will take place later today at 10pm PDT and June 1 at 1am EDT / 6am BST, where the green team is also expected to launch the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards.
Don’t miss @NVIDIAGeForce‘s Computex special event featuring @DOOM Eternal.
🔥 Hell never looked so good.
📅 May 31 at 10pm PT
📺 https://t.co/VGokQ0U7j0 pic.twitter.com/yxB3uxqW64— Bethesda (@bethesda) May 30, 2021
Although ray tracing is a safe bet, it’s possible we’ll also see other features appear in Doom Eternal, such as DLSS and maybe even Nvidia Reflex. The latter seems unlikely, however, given that it’s currently reserved for games with an esports focus.
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