Valve’s traditional Portal was lately re-released on Steam with some very fancy new visuals, together with ray-tracing and DLSS assist. That was nice information for Portal followers, however it’s additionally nice information for followers of all types of outdated PC video games.
Earlier than we go any additional, I’ll clarify the tech we’re speaking about. RTX is the identify given to a set of applied sciences utilized by graphics card firm Nvidia that makes use of “ray tracing and AI applied sciences” to, very merely, make PC video games look unimaginable. Right here’s a trailer for Portal With RTX, the re-release of the sport made with this tech, displaying the enhancements made to a sport that almost all of us keep in mind trying very 2007:
Now, the factor with RTX is that whereas on this case (and with Quake and Minecraft) it needed to be put into the sport by builders, Nvidia are additionally releasing a model of the tech with modders in thoughts. It’s known as RTX Remix:
With RTX Remix, the sport runs within the background and we change the outdated rendering APIs and programs with RTX Remix’s 64-bit Vulkan renderer. This permits the addition of ray-tracing to traditional video games and all of it updates in real-time as lights and objects transfer. Gentle will be solid from behind the participant, or from one other room, and in Portal with RTX, mild even travels by portals. Glass refracts mild, surfaces replicate element based mostly on their glossiness, reflections will be solid into the scene from behind the participant, objects can self-reflect, and oblique mild from off-screen illuminates and impacts what you see.
In comparison with Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, the path-traced ray tracing launched by RTX Remix is much more superior, bouncing mild 4 instances as a substitute of as soon as, bettering high quality, immersion, and the simulation of real-world mild. Moreover, we’ve additionally launched a number of new ray tracing strategies that additional enhance high quality whereas additionally being extra performant.
Nvidia says that RTX Remix is “a modding platform” that may enable “modders of all skill ranges to convey ray tracing and NVIDIA applied sciences to traditional video games”. Given it’s not out till 2023 I used to be anticipating we had been nonetheless months away from seeing what advantages it might convey to older video games, however nope!
Modders like LordVulcan have discovered you’ll be able to add RTX juice to some traditional titles, proper now, and generally it’s finished simply by…dropping some recordsdata from one folder to a different in your onerous drive and enabling some developer stuff within the console. That’s it. And it’s engaged on video games like SWAT 4 and the unique Max Payne.
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Whereas the outcomes aren’t good, at the very least in comparison with the skilled jobs finished over months on video games like Minecraft, they nonetheless look incredible! Right here’s Max Payne, for instance, courtesy of Alex Coulter:
That lighting. These shadows. That is magic.
Right here’s some footage of SWAT 4 taken by EiermannTelevision, which was launched in 2005 and most positively didn’t appear like this on the time:
And right here’s Half-Life 1, together with a little bit explainer on the way it was finished:
None of these examples are good, however it’s unimaginable they work this properly given how fast their implementation was. That is going to be so good when the precise RTX Remix is launched in 2023, however till then it’s going to be cool seeing what different traditional titles this slapdash workaround is suitable with!