Raytracing in GZDoom possible?

[Redneckerz]

50 minutes ago, Vadim said:

 

zdoom forums,  about that distance culling and env map baking technique.

Under the Darkcrafter moniker. This wasn't clear to anyone, hence the previous request if you published code on Git.

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I called it nonsense back then because I wanted volumetric spheres with distant geometry baked into their textures, I think having just one is enough.

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=1178138#p1178138

Since i like to read the feedback given to your ideas, here they are.

 

Spoiler

"Optimising" by creating more huge skybox textures filling up already-taxed memory and disk space?

Would also take up the time of artists and QA to make sure all of these pseudo-skyboxes look right at every part of the world.

Seems like a solution in search of a problem, frankly.

Spoiler

I 'get' the idea and having depth involved with a few baked frames about a distance cubemap would look horribly poppy. To do this "best" would mean rendering a whole scene in a tiny buffer which can clip in, and that'd only really benefit 6th gen console hardware (PS2 etc) as a makeshift depth of field effect/optimization given the architecture. This would only ease up on the overdraw and wouldn't ease the CPU any.

 

My question to you would be: Why did you barely respond and didn't you respond to the reasonable answers given by some users who do have some know-how (Kins and Leilei)?

 

This isn't compatible with you saying ''They won't even allow me to try it!'' because you could have just responded in that topic.

 

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https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=77089

This was literally posted today. If you have concerns of a lack of feeling heard, posting a thread made today isn't going to vouch for that complaint. Developers aren't on all the time and thus aren't always available to catch what is every idea presented to them.

 

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another link: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=70639

Similar to the first link (Hey i even replied in this one!) where most knowledgeable people are telling you that it is likely to bring more bad than good.

 

Again how is this compatible with you saying ''They won't even allow me to try it!''? You get reasonable responses from folks in the know who tell you that your suggestion won't do much good.

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Btw, I also suggested on including LOD support for 3D models and it's been quiet for a while.
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=76755

The only one without a response. I would say this fell of the radar because of what i mentioned above. Folks don't see every your move.

 

So basically what you got is this:

• Multiple ideas
• Multiple responses by people in the know who tell you the idea will be more hassle than it is worth
• One thread unnoticed
• You stating ''They won't even allow me to try it!'' which based on the threads above makes zero sense. You were given answers, and if you wanted to present a proof-of-concept, you could have.

The rundown is that you didn't do that. All you did was create a few idea threads, get proper responses of feedback and yet somehow have a chip on your shoulder that your idea's weren't carried forward.

 

14 minutes ago, Vadim said:

Sad, if I could code this would happen without any fuss on forums.

 

Now I got it, thanks.

Oh so you basically are an Ideas Guy. Great.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Redneckerz

[Darkcrafter07]

Well yeah there are definitely some things to mock me for, I'll try to come up with a proof of concept for LZDoom later but without monster visibilty determination.

[LuciferSam86]

FWIW Beware LZDoom might work in a completely different way than GZDoom, tho.

EDIT: I think we are going way Off-Topic from the original thread here. There might be people who subscribed for the raytracing part and not interested in this.

Edited January 7, 2023 by LuciferSam86

[Graf Zahl]

Basing on LZDoom? That won't do you any good at all - this is based on a much older GZDoom version that is no longer relevant for the current development mainline.

 

[Darkcrafter07]

2 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Basing on LZDoom? That won't do you any good at all - this is based on a much older GZDoom version that is no longer relevant for the current development mainline.

 

If GZDoom allows for sprites/walls distance culling then I could do it under GZDoom too, I saw these cvars were available in GZDoom but had no effect.

[Graf Zahl]

No, they currently don't work - but I do not consider something "working" that just leaves holes in the map without any compensation, that's why I never bothered.
 

 

[ＤΞＬＴΛ]

Why ANYONE would want ray-tracing in my opinion is beyond me, I can't even get shadowmaps to work correctly so why even bother with ray tracing?

 

Games that do have ray-tracing (except for some apparently) are usually absolute dog-shit and run like total garbage on older software. whereas games that tend to look retro or by extension, a ps1 game or a quake clone, tend to have a more charming appearance as well as running smoothly due to a small amount of graphical resources not grinding the cpu to a halt.

 

 

Final verdict: retro good, raytracing bad

[Graf Zahl]

That depends on whether you use ray tracing for things where it yields results. You can get some great shadow effects with it if done right - but it surely won't do that if you try to use it as the only means of lighting. And sadly, all of the ray tracing showcases I have seen so far do it wrong. It's a good tool to augment a scene, but a bad tool to render a full scene. Obviously the latter is a lot easier to program, because you can just forget about virtually everything you have to work with, so it's what is done to show off and then gives ray tracing the bad name it already got.

 

[ChopBlock223]

On 1/7/2023 at 9:06 PM, Vadim said:

I don't code, this is what developers are for.

I love how casually brazen this is.

 

On 1/7/2023 at 10:24 PM, Graf Zahl said:

If you pay me a year's salary to exclusively work on GZDoom, I am fairly certain that I can get it to a state where those gargantuan Boom maps can be played with at least 150 fps.

Hoping you acquire a small fortune from some inheritance or lottery or whatever, just to see what you'd do with GzDoom when you've got full focus and free time.

 

 

I'll say that some sort of long distance culling sounds attractive. Rough concept from someone who knows little is maybe some sort of "map" where the level is divided up into major chunks, as well as priorities or other ordering/excluding based on which one the player is in, and each chunk has its own segment which is a large reduced definition model of the entire level as a whole (which the authors would provide on their own).

 

I already recognize a whole bunch of big ifs, however, and the performance benefits may very well be quite modest, with the approach I'm imagining possibly being bothersome to implement and certainly troublesome for a mapper to put to use.

[WSADKO]

even if its possible - why? why the heck would anyone want raytracing in doom of all games?

[Graf Zahl]

Don't get too hung up on these poor demos. Used properly it can be used to render better shadows.

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, WSADKO said:

even if its possible - why? why the heck would anyone want raytracing in doom of all games?

Ray tracing is a tool, not a specific graphical effect. The achievement here is hardware accelerated ray tracing, what can be done with it now has many possibilities. One such concept is accelerated audio path tracing, suing an environment map and surface properties similar to graphical effects to create an organic sound scape with natural reverb.

[Marisa the Magician]

Funny, I've actually been wondering why games don't do that more often. Physically accurate sound propagation would be pretty good, no more hearing stuff on the other side of several walls as if it was right next to you.

[Redneckerz]

20 minutes ago, Marisa the Magician said:

Funny, I've actually been wondering why games don't do that more often. Physically accurate sound propagation would be pretty good, no more hearing stuff on the other side of several walls as if it was right next to you.

If i recall correctly, Mark Cerny said of the PS5 that its Tempest Engine (Basically a Radeon GCN unit repurposed as audio unit) was able to do audio raytracing.

 

Now Audio raytracing would be real cool. The amount of games that really take advantage of the audio spectrum are far and inbetween.

[mankubus]

Is anyone working on raytracing doom stuff?

[Metal_Slayer]

Absolutely nobody, the creator didn't want or expect other people to improve on his work, he just wanted to get people talking about how talented he is or something and he has already moved into making other classic FPS games look awful, a few people tried working with it but no big project got released.

[Darkcrafter07]

43 minutes ago, mankubus said:

Is anyone working on raytracing doom stuff?

Seems like the only port with ray tracing support at the moment is this one and it's based on PrBoom. It makes for the same effect the Darkplaces engine for Quake would do: overdone effect but at least Darkplaces allows to mix it with the original lighting and even add some GI so it doesn't look that much bad.

So this port RTX would have looked tons better if it was adding just a slight touch like some reflections on liquids, some bit of reflections of metallic textures like shawn2. Just a bit of extra lighting from "lighting" textures and just a bit of shadows. The key word is "slight".