Mod for 1996 Quake adds ray tracing to the game

Modder sultim_t has released the release version of Quake: Ray Traced with which the 1996 game as well as the 2021 rerelease version supports path tracing. In the release trailer, the developer also states that Half-Life: Ray Traced has been postponed for the time being.

Owners of Quake on Steam can use the mod via GitHub free download. You can then click on the executable and the program will automatically find the target file folder. Alternatively, a user can extract the contents of the zip file into a custom folder called ‘id1’, sultim_t explains via GitHub. The mod does not support DLSS by default but with two additional files, also available from the GitHub page, Deep Learning Super Sampling can be added to the game manually.

Path tracing is a form of ray tracing in which paths of light reflections are simulated on the basis of random movements of that ‘ray of light’. In other words, the game simulates a beam of light between a light source and the ‘camera’ and calculates a large amount of arbitrary directions in which that light sample could move and what happens to a light particle when a surface is hit.

The developer, who is actually called Sultim Tsyrendashiev, previously added ray tracing to the first three installments within the Doom franchise. He is currently working on ray tracing support for Half-Life. That project has already been postponed. Nvidia previously released RTX support for Quake II itself.