Back in June 2019, when id Software announced Doom Eternal, the studio promised that the game would support ray tracing. Now, however, in an interview with Digital Foundry, Marty Stratton has said that the game won't launch with ray tracing capabilities.

In this interview, the executive producer at id Software, Marty Stratton, was asked about the PC features that would be included in the upcoming DOOM game, specifically ray tracing. To this, Marty replied by saying that the team didn't spend much of their time looking at it. They just did an “initial implementation and exploration about a year ago”. At the time they still had multiple ideas on what would be added to the game.

The tech team at id Software was excited with the technology, but to follow the production and release schedule of Doom Eternal, the studio “had to pull back on that effort”.

Despite dropping ray tracing back when the game was in an early development stage, it is possible it will come to the game at a later date. As Marty stated in that same interview, the tech team has some interesting new ideas beyond “reflections, shadows and real-time lighting”. According to TechRadar, id Software ‘has some really cool ideas for ray tracing that won’t just make for a better experience for players, but also developers in terms of the ease of implementing the tech.'

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KitGuru says: Are you waiting for Doom Eternal? Is the lack of ray tracing support a significant drawback?

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