DOOM Eternal could run at 1,000 FPS according to lead engine programmer

DOOM Eternal looks to be another exciting addition to the DOOM line of games. In a recent interview, Billy Khan, the lead engine programmer of id Tech 7, discussed how Doom Eternal can hit incredibly high frame rates in a recent interview with IGN. DOOM Eternal runs on the new id Tech 7 engine, which is built to scale well across different types of hardware.

Khan discussed in the interview how the id Tech 6 engine maxed out at 250 FPS, but the id Tech 7 engine hit 400 FPS in internal testing on custom hardware. The engine could theoretically take that even further, to rates above 1,000 FPS, in the right conditions. Here’s an an excerpt of the interview:

DOOM is all about having lots of effects, explosions, and guns firing, fighting demons, so our particle systems were majorly improved, we have now more particles running on the GPU, taking advantage of the prowess of all the computing power we have there, which allows us to have bigger explosions, more vibrant looking particle effects and embers and more atmospheric volumetrics, all running at 60Hz.

Speed is one of the most important things of playing a DOOM game, so that takes a lot of effort from all departments. So, on the id Tech 6, we maxed it out to 250 frames per second. This game, if you have the hardware right, it could hit a thousand frames per second. That’s the max we’ve had. There’s really no upper limit. I’ve had some hardware here locally that I’ve built just for testing where we had scenes running in the 400 frames per second. People that have 144Hz or above monitors, even the new monitors that you’ll see coming out even above that going forward, this game will hold up for many years.

Khan also discusses in the interview how id Tech 7 scales well across different types of hardware. For example, it could take advantage of the Xbox One X or run on older hardware.

Of course, there are no monitors close to displaying 1,000FPS right now, so unless Bethesda invented a time machine, you won’t see those frame rates any time soon. But the insight from Khan shows the value of building an engine with scaling in mind. As hardware progresses, games like DOOM Eternal will be able to take advantage of it better thanks to forward thinking from its developers and its engine’s developers.