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1y ago

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

Gaming @beehaw.org

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

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Games @sh.itjust.works

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

Half-Life 2 RTX, An RTX Remix Project - Announce Trailer

51 4

65 comments

RTX On/Off feels really dishonest here given the assets swap as well.
- that's just part of RTX remix and somewhat the point of that tool. After all you need to get proper RTX materials in there and why not upres the assets as well while you are at it?
  
  Then id like to see the same better assets with rtx and without. Those alone would make an incredible difference.
- You have to use new assets for these old games if you really want to make the most out of ray tracing because PBR materials are necessary to better simulate the way light and reflections bounce off a surface.
  
  I disagree that you really need to put much effort into updating the materials to get benefits from rtx. HL1 RTX looks pretty great with only the bare minimum PBR remasters, because PBR and RTX are 2 separate things that both improve a game's look. PBR materials help rtx just as much as PBR materials help regular rendering, and rtx helps PBR materials only a little bit more than rtx helps regular materials. All of the effects used in PBR materials apply the same to regular rendering as with RTX.

So we'll get another old game where everything looks oddly shiny instead of oddly dull?
- That’s not what ray tracing is about at all. Reflections, imo, are the least interesting part of ray tracing.
  
  shame most people who implement it don't agree
  
  Can you elaborate? Thanks!
  
  I partially disagree, GI is easy to do most of the time with baked lighting, but reflections (especially more diffuse reflections) are hard unless you have very simple environments or tons of gpu resources to spend on rendering alternate camera angles. Even the more modern rasterized reflection techniques such as parallax corrected cubemaps or screen space reflections break easily if you look at them wrong. Raytraced global illumination and soft shadows are still great though, but are more easy to get around with regular rendering in most games where the environments are very static.

I find it hilarious that the "RTX On" is remastered assets and the "RXT Off" is just the original game.
Id be more interested in seeing what the original assets with RTX look like.
- Or new assets with RTX on and off. As it is it looks like RTX is responsible for the new textures, which is far from honest.
- Very wrong, without proper materials, light bounces would make no sense (if there would be even any)
  
  Wrong, if you just ported the original HL2 materials, things might look slightly weird but light bounces will very much be present and it would still look better than the original renderer. Light bounces (for global illumination) will happen with any material parameters. HL2 materials had bump and a kind of merged reflectiveness and metalicness value already, and if you ported them over correctly things would look acceptable (but not ideal).
- There was a setting for that in portal rtx, I'm sure it will be in hl2 rtx as well.

I might be in the minority here, but I couldn't help but think Half-Life 2 still looks really good for a game released in 2004. Obviously "RTX on" is nicer to look at, but all the small details like the magnifying glass that actually magnifies made me appreciate the old assets/graphics so much, what a milestone it was.
- The art direction is impeccable and it still shines for it.
  
  Two thirds of graphics is art direction, the other third is tech. Source: a rule I just made up

To be honest, the biggest takeaway of the trailer is how well the original HL2 aged.

Wish they'd do Hal-Life 1 with ray tracing because my video card might actually be able to run that one.
- https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-half-life-ray-traced-mod-has-been-released/
- Quake 2 RTX can bring my 3090 to its knees. You could do HL2 but I bet it’d be about similar to Portal RTX
  
  I believe its because the RTX remix games are path traced which is alot harder to do
  
  What? Am I missing something? Several comments here about 3000 series not being able to handle what was easy for my 2060 to handle.
- There is Black Mesa if you're looking for a Half Life 1 remake. Not sure if there is raytracing in it though.
  
  Black Mesa was so fucking good it's ridiculous.
  
  If it did have it, it'd almost certainly be too much for my RTX 3060. Portal RTX didn't work too well.
  
  It's not RTX but that was a fucking 10/10 experience. Xen knocked my socks off.
- Good news then: https://github.com/sultim-t/xash-rt/releases
- The cool thing about raytracing is it doesn't really matter how complex a scene is. The bad thing about raytracing is it doesn't really matter how complex a scene is.
  If your card can't run remixed HL2, it also won't be able to do HL1

Remember the Quake 2 RTX version? Remember how no one played it? It's just, not a good look, runs slow and just isn't needed. This is all just to make more people buy Nvidia cards.
- I have no idea what you're talking about. Quake 2 RTX is my go-to recommendation if someone wants to see what raytracing is actually about. Not only are there some built in tools to fiddle with lighting but the end result makes such a huge difference that I can't see myself playing Quake 2 again without raytracing. Out of all the RTX supported games Quake 2 was the one that blew me away the most. It makes bright areas bright and dark areas actually dark and you can see how light sources, in real time, change the look of the environment.

I'll be the one to be overly excited: GIVE IT TO ME!

Now they have to do HL3 right….right?
- They sort of announced HL3 in the post credit scene on HLAlyx, but of course we've been promised HL3 before so even if we get it it'll be another 10 years probably. Alyx was so incredibly good though.
  
  Wait I thought we all agreed HLA is HL3 in spirit

You son of a removed, I'm in!

I know it’s not the latest and greatest but I’m so happy I’ve got a 3090 to play this on. Can not wait.

Well, cool project but let me see something outside of that room!
- Yeah, that was not really a good room to show off RT features. Most of the shown effects can be convincingly faked with modern shader techniques.

Awesome, really looking forward to this!

What ever happened to Project Borealis?

I hope they do the episodes as well.

Download link, please? I can't find one anywhere.
(Also, how in the hell do you install these things? I tried to play the RTX remix of NFS Underground 2, but gave up cause I couldn't figure it out. There's no installer, and it's not as simple as just copying files over...)
- It's not out yet, this is just an announcement

65 comments