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One thing to stay up for: Nvidia has spent years showcasing how its ray tracing know-how can improve basic video games like Quake 2 and Portal. As improvement continues on a fan-made Half-Life 2 remaster, the corporate has launched a free demo together with its ray-traced modding toolkit to spotlight DLSS 4 and different new options.
Nvidia’s full RTX Remix modding suite is now obtainable by the Nvidia app and website. To show the know-how, 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 big beforehand used the toolset to create an formidable 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: May and Magic, SWAT 4, and Want for Pace Underground 2.
A drag-and-drop interface makes it simple for customers so as to add bodily properties to previous textures in order that they reply to new ray-traced lighting accurately. Modders can even create new textures or use machine studying to upscale the originals. The software replaces a sport’s authentic renderer with Vulkan to facilitate the insertion of recent property in real-time.
The complete launch provides new options to simplify modding and showcase Nvidia’s newest neural rendering methods. The transformer ray reconstruction mannequin for DLSS 4 and multi-frame technology are key highlights, however the Half-Life 2 RTX demo may even introduce further 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 authentic animations. For instance, characters in Half-Life 2 RTX will function 30 occasions as many polygons as the unique.
A brand new software referred to 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 reinforce oblique lighting element whereas enhancing 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 reinforce fog and god rays extra effectively than conventional rasterization.
Clearly, Nvidia has packed quite a lot of energy into this toolkit. The Half-Life 2 RTX demo ought to completely showcase RTX Remix’s skills within the Ravenholm and Nova Prospect chapters. The finished HL2 conversion nonetheless wants work and has no launch date but. Nonetheless, it will likely be free to Half-Life 2 homeowners upon its eventual launch.
