PrBoom: Ray Traced

PrBoom: Ray Traced adds ray tracing to Doom and completely overhauls its lighting. This isn't the author's first project of this kind — he has previously added ray tracing to classic games such as Half-Life and Quake.

Now familiar things become light sources: the sky illuminates levels with its color, lava emits an orange glow, barrels a green one, while torches and gunshots cast dynamic shadows. Even enemy fireballs light up the environment as they fly. All of this makes the game feel far more alive and atmospheric.

Textures have been reworked to respond to light correctly. Water and blood reflect the surroundings, and surfaces look more realistic. Enemies are still rendered as 2D sprites, so occasional lighting oddities can be noticed, but overall this barely gets in the way. Particularly interesting is the reworked Spectre — it now appears as a creature with an invisibility effect, refracting light around it.

Some levels may turn out to be too dark, simply because the original had no light sources there. In such cases, a flashlight can be switched on — a simple solution that actually adds to the atmosphere.

Overall, the mod preserves the look of the original in many places, just with softer and more realistic lighting. But in some scenes the atmosphere changes significantly, sometimes even removing the element of surprise where it once existed.