DOOM: The Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages

51 ratings
Better RT Reflections, with just 4 commands! (UPDATED)
By BrochachoTB
These two commands will drastically improve the quality of ray traced reflections with only a little performance loss, but with a HUGE benefit! NOTE: RT reflections are enabled at Medium or higher Reflection quality, Low falls back to screen-space reflections like on PS5 and Xbox Series.
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The commands
  • r_raytracedReflectionsTemporalUpscaleQuality 0 // Gets rid of the flickering in reflections as well as makes them overall more cleaner and less blurry. Best used with DLSS, FSR, or XeSS based on your GPU vendor, because the reflections render based on your INTERNAL resolution. Consider keeping this setting unmodified if you're going for high/native resolutions. Performance impact: Medium
  • r_ssr 0 // Disables the game's screen-space reflections that blend over the ray traced ones. Because of how this game's RT reflections work by default, there's a lot less particles in the ray traced structure compared to Doom Eternal's raw RT reflections. This is where the below command comes in... Performance impact: Next to none
  • r_skipBlendedTLAS 0 // Allows particles to be captured in RT reflections, just like Eternal's RT reflections! Performance impact: High
  • r_ssrMinSmoothness X // Allows way more surfaces to use reflections. REPLACE X WITH YOUR DESIRED VALUE: Default cutoff is 0.8, Eternal's Low-High cutoff is 0.65, Eternal's Ultra cutoff is 0.58. Performance impact: Medium-High

THIS WILL HAVE A CONSIDERABLE HIT TO PERFORMANCE, but not as large of a hit as enabling Full Path Tracing is. Test each command out as your preferences align. Hebeth is probably the best stage to test this out, particularly around where you get the Plasma Gun.
Efficient execution?
If you want to turn these commands on all at once, you can do the following
  • Go to your DOOMTheDarkAges install folder
  • Go into the base folder and make a new txt/cfg file
  • Put the desired commands in said text file ON DIFFERENT LINES, then save the file
  • Launch the game, then in the console opened by pressing Tilde (`/~ key), type "exec x" without quotes, and with x = the txt/cfg file you just made WITH the file extension at the end!!
  • You will need to re-execute the command(s) every time you launch the game and every time you make any changes to your video settings, so this makes it way easier. You can also press the up or down arrows on your keyboard in the console to cycle through the previous console commands you entered from the current session.
Bonus?
These don't pertain to raytracing at all, but you can put the following in your Steam launch options (without quotes!) for some benefits

"+com_skipIntroVideo 1" - Skips the startup logos completely, which helps with bootup times immensely
"+com_skipKeyPressOnLoadScreens 1" - Skips having to press space when a loading screen is finished, good for getting right back into the action, but if you appreciate the loading screen tips and pointers, perhaps ignore this one
11 Comments
StarCh1ld 16 Sep @ 7:59am 
SEGAAAAAAA
Bananakin 23 May @ 7:34am 
Bro, you're a junyus, thanks for the guide!
BrochachoTB  [author] 18 May @ 6:56am 
Yeah. Make one inside the "base" folder, put the commands in there, then add "+exec autoexec.cfg" to your launch options
Question-Mark 17 May @ 11:56pm 
Can this just be put in an autoexec,cfg file?
BrochachoTB  [author] 15 May @ 6:07pm 
The intro and loading button skips work on basically all id Tech games as far as I'm concerned
Bust in the Wind 15 May @ 3:18pm 
Big ups for the logo skip!
BrochachoTB  [author] 15 May @ 11:41am 
Huh yeah that's right, I think the game's realtime lighting would've been a more apt comparison actually.
Deus_nsf 15 May @ 11:09am 
Which you could! Even with an in game option in the advanced settings!
BrochachoTB  [author] 14 May @ 9:06am 
That'd be like asking if you can turn off the normal maps in Doom 3 back in the day.
𝒥𝒶𝒸𝓀... 14 May @ 8:53am 
m3lon the game relies on raytracing for optimization, there is no lighting when turned off