The Doom 2 mod adds full-blown raytracing to the legendary FPS, and it looks amazing.

Everyone knows that Doom 2 has more features than the original Doom. I'm talking about the super shotgun with double barrels and the Icon of Sin. I rest my argument. The legendary FPS just got better thanks to a fantastic mod that introduces path traced, real-time ray tracing, and transforms the look of its infernal environments, hellish halls, and nightmare demons.

Doom 2 Ray Traced, created by the talented modder Shirokii, can be downloaded for free right now. In the release notes for the mod, shirokii says that introducing "real time path tracing" into Doom 2 will "allow shadows, global illumination and reflections without any prebaking." Every object has a shadow. Emissive maps are important for lighting. Volumetric lighting is traced in order to simulate a dense environment". Impressive.

This real-time path tracking allows mirrors and glasses to actually refract light and reflect it, giving the classic environments and characters of the game a new and atmospheric look. I'm especially impressed with the way the Cacodemons lightning ball attacks illuminate demons' internals, and how bright and fierce Imp Fireballs are, streaking in the dark.

How is this lighting magic achieved? shirokii points out that Doom 2: Ray Traced by default uses the RTGL1 rendering engine that was previously used for: Half-Life 1, Quake 1, PrBoom, and Serious Samuel TFE: Ray Traced. Shirokii, however, has gone beyond these mods by upgrading the renderer to include particle-based fluids simulation for blood, HDR monitors, HDR frame interpolation, simple height maps, and various performance tweaks. Doom 2 Ray Traced also works with RTX remix.

Overall, this is an impressive feat and shirokii deserves a lot of credit. It's true that Doom 2 Ray Traced is a different game than the original. But, since you can switch between classic graphics and the new ray traced graphics by pressing the "C" button, I don't see any downside to this mod. Chapeau shirokii, chapeau.