An AMD Graphics Engineer Is Growing A Candy Path Traced Castle Wolfenstein Remake
On: June 13, 2022
It’s been just a few years since NVIDIA introduced its first foray into making a real-time ray tracing GPU. Since that preliminary announcement, video games engines, software program builders, and even physics researchers have introduced us with some wonderful representations of simulated gentle in a comparatively life like output.
Of course, to not be left behind, AMD has its personal ray tracing, which it calls path tracing. Functionally the thought is similar. A lightweight source will hint a path in all instructions and can cast a shadow where applicable. We’ve seen RTX options show up in video games like Minecraft, Doom, Quake II, and Half-Life. Thanks to an AMD researcher Dihara Wijetunga, we’re returning to one more traditional dipping its toes into the candy lighted goodness of path tracing.
The game to which we’re referring is sort of sufficiently old to drink within the United States having been launched in 2001—Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The game has an total constructive rating at 88 on Metacritic right now. It additionally was the bottom of the mega common free to play spinoff referred to as Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Although Wijetunga seems to be using a DX12 modified model of the open source code referred to as iortcw he’s calling Wolf PT, the unique Return to Castle Wolfenstein was constructed on a modified id Tech 3 engine. That similar engine was additionally the engine used for Quake 3, so possibly we’ll see a path traced Quake 3 sooner or later too. Though it might be hypothesis at the moment it does make sense that, sooner or later, there could also be Vulkan assist. Additionally, this appears to be a labor of affection challenge by one particular person, whether or not it sees the sunshine of day is tough to say for sure. Still, it is cool to take a look at how a lot lighting like this will change the texture of a game.
Screenshot Showing Comparison between Path Traced and Original Lighting
We additionally need to marvel, although, at Microsoft’s involvement in issues like Minecraft RTX with NVIDIA, and its current plans to amass Activision-Blizzard, who personal the rights to Wolfenstein. Is it potential that sooner or later we see Microsoft stepping in to enhance and re-release these classics with upgrades like this sooner or later? We positive hope so.
