Will GZDoom ever get RTX support?

[Nabroc]

The recent PRBoom RTX thing is pretty sweet. id like to see GZDOOM get RTX support in the near future. i think it would be really cool with PBR and parallax textures.
One day....

Thoughts?

[Rachael]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Maybe. It depends.

People who ask this question often have the delusion that it'd be as easy as copy-paste. It's never that easy. Things are simply different in prBoom, and the code would have to be changed to fit GZDoom. That is just the way it is, sorry. Plus it would need to be tested to see if it even works. As far as I know we have only one developer among us who even has RTX-capable hardware. Why does no one just ask the original developer to see if they would do it for GZDoom? You know damn well RTX cards are difficult to get your hands on - even if they are at all available they're expensive as hell - so why so many people expect us to "just" do something that requires us to have one?

I can't promise you that it'll never happen in GZDoom, but likewise I can't promise that it ever will. If you're waiting for it, don't hold your breath.

[Gez]

This depends on having a developer who has the skill (writing efficient renderers is difficult), the motivation (coders may very well prefer working with something else than rendering), the hardware (you can't test RTX code if you don't have an RTX card) and the time (people can have other things to do after all, such as earning a wage).

Find someone who has these four things and your wish will become reality.

[Rachael]

People expect this kind of thing to be simple. If it was so simple, then a) anyone could do it and wouldn't have to wait for a GZDoom dev to do it, and b) it would already be done by now.

[Phredreeke]

Well, this makes a change from the usual “why won’t you support GZDoom on my 2004 rig?”

[Redneckerz]

Well, this makes a change from the usual “why won’t you support GZDoom on my 2004 rig?”

Current day GZ actually may run on a 2004 rig if the GLES renderer is selected.

Having said that: Doubtful GZ itself will support, but ZDRay's current lightmapping code does support light baking through RTX. I haven't properly covered that yet on wiki, but dpjudas did do an overhaul on the code so besides the CPU rendering, you can accelerate the process on RTX cards, essentially turning it into a modern baking solution.

[joshg253]

✋ I can test RTX code.