The PC version of Doom: The Dark Ages just got a significant visual upgrade though not everyone will be able to take advantage of it as developer ID software has added Path Tracing to the game which takes it’s already impressive lighting to whole new levels of realism and fidelity. Doom: The Dark Ages had used native Ray Tracing right from it’s launch, utilizing Ray Traced Global Illumination, which is a technology that simulates how light behaves in the real world, for all it’s in-game lighting effects and Path tracing is just the higher and richer version of the same technology that makes everything even more realistic and lifelike.
But it all comes with a heavy hit on performance too, so if you’re not using at least a high-end graphics card from either NVIDIA or AMD, preferably an RTX 4070 class or higher, the colossal performance dip is probably not worth the added visual delights as Path Tracing is currently the most graphically demanding technology out there that can bring even some of the most expensive GPUs to their knees. The latest update also brings NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction (which is sort of a de-noiser that’s used to clean up a scene after applying RT) to Doom: The Dark Ages that, when coupled with DLSS 4, should provide a nice boost to your overall FPS which would greatly help in case you’re aiming to run the game with Path Tracing.
The patch also adds an in-game benchmark tool in Doom: The Dark Ages which should come in handy if you want to get an idea of how your system fares in the game with it’s varying levels of visual quality settings.
So if you’ve enjoyed Doom: The Dark Ages since it came out in May and have a sufficiently high-end graphics card capable of delivering Path Tracing without losing a lot of FPS, this patch is going to make your in-game experience a lot more visually richer. But aside from that, the patch doesn’t really add to the game in terms of gameplay in any way so that’s about it.
