One thing to look ahead to: Nvidia has spent years showcasing how its ray tracing expertise can improve basic video games like Quake 2 and Portal. As growth continues on a fan-made Half-Life 2 remaster, the corporate has launched a free demo together with its ray-traced modding toolkit to focus on DLSS 4 and different new options.
Nvidia’s full RTX Remix modding suite is now out there by means of the Nvidia app and web site. To show the expertise, a free demo of the upcoming totally path-traced model of Half-Life 2 will launch on March 18.
Nvidia’s RTX Remix permits modders so as to add ray tracing, DLSS, new artwork property, and different superior options to PC video games that make the most of DirectX 8 and 9. The GPU large beforehand used the toolset to create an bold remaster of Portal. In the meantime, unbiased tinkerers have used early variations of the corporate’s code on early 2000s classics like Max Payne, Darkish Messiah: Would possibly and Magic, SWAT 4, and Want for Velocity Underground 2.
A drag-and-drop interface makes it simple for customers so as to add bodily properties to previous textures so that they reply to new ray-traced lighting appropriately. Modders can even create new textures or use machine studying to upscale the originals. The software replaces a sport’s unique renderer with Vulkan to facilitate the insertion of latest property in real-time.
The complete launch provides new options to simplify modding and showcase Nvidia’s newest neural rendering strategies. The transformer ray reconstruction mannequin for DLSS 4 and multi-frame era are key highlights, however the Half-Life 2 RTX demo can even introduce extra instruments.
Earlier variations of RTX Remix enabled changing textures and lights, however modders can now swap upgraded character fashions and shortly match them to their unique animations. For instance, characters in Half-Life 2 RTX will function 30 occasions as many polygons as the unique.
A brand new software known as RTX Pores and skin combines ray tracing and subsurface scattering, permitting ray-traced gentle to penetrate semi-transparent supplies like pores and skin, wax, marble, or jade. Neural Radiance Cache trains a neural community on gameplay content material to boost oblique lighting element whereas bettering efficiency by as much as 15 p.c. The brand new RTX IO function dynamically manages texture settings to take care of most texture element with out exceeding the GPU’s VRAM restrict. Moreover, RTX volumetrics makes use of ray tracing to boost fog and god rays extra effectively than conventional rasterization.
Clearly, Nvidia has packed a variety of energy into this toolkit. The Half-Life 2 RTX demo ought to completely showcase RTX Remix’s talents within the Ravenholm and Nova Prospect chapters. The finished HL2 conversion nonetheless wants work and has no launch date but. Nevertheless, it is going to be free to Half-Life 2 homeowners upon its eventual launch.
