Why ‘DOOM: The Dark Ages’ feels so buttery-smooth

DOOM 2016 is one of my favorite shooters, and a big part of that is how fast and smooth it feels, despite being no slouch in the visuals department. Its threequel, DOOM: The Dark Ages, is coming out next week, and Will Smith gets to play it early. And for that, I loathe him. But he’s taking a hard look at what makes these games feel so good.

In short: DOOM doesn’t micro-stutter. In fact, it experiences micro-stuttering much less frequently than other visually intense games. What does that mean? Not only are the frame rates fairly consistent even when things get busy on screen, but also the time the game takes to generate frames is remarkably stable, which can affect the smooth output of the visuals. Comparing DOOM and Rocket League to the latest Call of Duty, even if the latter is running at a much higher FPS, it’s a lot less consistent in the frametime.

Will Smith/Foundry

The real juicy part of this comparison starts at about the 9-minute mark, when Will compares the frametime render difference from one frame to the next. DOOM consistently keeps it below just 2 milliseconds for over 99 percent of the time, with only Rocket League getting anywhere near that kind of smoothness. That’s what makes it feel so great.

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