Valve classic Portal It was recently re-released on Steam with some very nice new visuals, including ray tracing and DLSS support. This was great news for Portal fans, but also great news for those who love all kinds of old PC games.
Before I go any further, I’ll explain the technology we’re talking about. RTX is the name given to a suite of technologies used by graphics card company Nvidia, which uses “ray tracing and artificial intelligence technologies” to simply make PC games look incredible. Here’s the trailer for it Portal with RTXA re-release of the game made with this technology shows the improvements made to a game most of us remember seeing in 2007:
Now, the thing with RTX is that in this case (and with Earthquake and Minecraft) that developers had to include in the game, Nvidia is also releasing a version of the technology with modders in mind. It’s called RTX Remix:
With RTX Remix, the game runs in the background and we replace legacy rendering APIs and systems with RTX Remix’s 64-bit Vulkan renderer. It allows you to add ray tracing to classic games, all updated in real time as lights and objects move. Light can be cast from behind the player or from another room and inside Portal with RTX, light even passes through portals. Glass refracts light, surfaces reflect detail due to their brightness, reflections can be cast onto the stage from behind the player, objects can reflect themselves, and indirect light from outside the screen illuminates and affects what you see.
in comparison Quake II RTX and Minecraft with RTX, the path-traced ray tracing introduced by RTX Remix is even more advanced, bouncing light four times instead of once, improving quality, immersion, and simulation of real-world light. In addition, we introduced several new ray tracing methods that improve quality even more, but are also more efficient.
Nvidia says RTX Remix is a “modding platform” that will allow “modders of all skill levels to bring ray tracing and NVIDIA technologies to classic games.” Given that it doesn’t end until 2023, I’d expect it to still be months before we see what benefits this might bring to older games, but nope!
Modders like LordVulcan now you’ve discovered that you can add RTX juice to some classic titles, and in most cases it’s done by just… dropping some files from one folder to another on your hard drive and running some developer stuff on the console. This is so. And works on such games SWAT 4 and original Max Payne🇧🇷
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Although the results are not perfect, at least compared to months of professional work done in games like Minecraft, they still look fantastic! Here it is Max Paynefor example, Courtesy of Alex Coulter🇧🇷
That lighting. Those shadows. This is magic.
Here are some images SWAT 4 Filmed by EiermannTelevisionReleased in 2005 and it didn’t look like this then:
And here’s Half-Life 1, with a little explanation of how it’s done:
None of these patterns are perfect, but considering how fast they were implemented, it’s amazing that they worked so well. It will be great when the actual RTX Remix is released in 2023, but until then it will be great to see what other classic titles this vertical solution fits in with!
