Thanks to path tracing, the 21-year-old shooter “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” shines in a whole new light.
Current graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia support a new type of lighting with ray tracing. This is often used for reflections and global illumination. However, the supreme discipline of this technique, called path tracing, is far too complex for current titles, since the entire lighting in the game is calculated realistically. Therefore, path tracing is currently only possible in relatively simple games like “Quake 2” or “Minecraft”.
Aged first-person shooter with path tracing
Manufacturer AMD has now presented another title that shines in a whole new light thanks to path tracing: The 21-year-old first-person shooter “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” was equipped with the new lighting technology by Dihara Wijetunga, Senior Graphics R&D Engineer at AMD. The “Wolf PT” baptized version is not yet available for download, so far there is only
Comparison pictures with the original from 2001
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Dark atmosphere increases again
These impress with the realistic lighting effects: sterile corridors with simple shadows become very harmonious vaults with a gloomy atmosphere. Torches and moonlight also benefit significantly from calculating the lighting using path tracing. In return, a powerful AMD or Nvida graphics card must be plugged into the computer for “Wolf PT”, otherwise players can only expect a slow slide show.
Still on the index
Even 21 years after its release, “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” is still indexed in Germany. The game could still be de-indexed. The rights to the title are now owned by Bethesda, and the company was able to get “Quake 2” removed from the index.
Doom with ray tracing looks amazing – get the mod here
