Within the waning days of 2022, when Nvidia was making ready to launch the spectacular, ray tracing-enabled Portal with RTX, we had been already wanting towards a future when “the Nvidia RTX Remix modding platform used to remaster Portal may also be launched to most of the people sooner or later, making it simpler to create up to date variations of previous DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 video games with AI-upscaled textures and fashionable lighting results,” as we wrote on the time. That “sooner or later” future has absolutely arrived this week with Nvidia’s open beta launch of its RTX Remix modding instruments.
This is not the broader modding neighborhood’s first style of RTX Remix’s upscaling and lighting instruments. Nvidia launched an alpha model of the RTX runtime final April, providing “seize and substitute” modules that would improve older sport belongings and add fashionable graphical options like DLSS3 at playback. ModDB lists dozens of older video games with an RTX.conf file that provides some stage of RTX-powered graphical enhancement.
However this week’s official open beta launch provides “skilled modders” new instruments to simply create and insert these sorts of up to date graphical results and fashions in basic titles. That features “generative AI texture instruments” that Nvidia says use “our personal proprietary mannequin skilled on our in-house dataset” to routinely upscale low-res textures to as much as 4 occasions the unique decision. It additionally means the power so as to add “bodily correct dynamic lights” that work with ray-tracing-capable {hardware} and quite a lot of open supply fashions and materials maps for modders to play with.
Whereas the vast launch of those sorts of instruments ought to assist result in much more “now with RTX” remixes of 3D video games, Nvidia warns that RTX Remix “just isn’t a one-click answer and requires time and dedication to create wonderful mods.” For Half-Life 2 RTX, for example, the modding group crafted a brand new Gravity Gun mannequin with seven occasions as many textures and 70 occasions the polygonal element, which is much from a turnkey course of, even with the very best instruments. Nonetheless, Nvidia guarantees the RTX Remix creator equipment will take away the necessity to “juggle dozens of instruments” or “be expert in reverse engineering” to replace an older sport’s visuals.
And whereas RTX Remix compatibility is presently targeted on video games from the DirectX 8 and 9 period (i.e., late ’90s to early ’00s), Nvidia guarantees that “sport compatibility will broaden over time, partially as Nvidia publishes extra feature-rich variations of the RTX Remix Runtime.” We’re ready with bated breath for the day when ray tracing can lastly improve Daikatana.
For now, although, we’ll merely goggle on the newest trailer for Half-Life 2: RTX and its potential to make the almost 20-year-old sport look pretty much as good right now because it did in our reminiscences.
