My favourite games from 20 years ago are just getting a stunning graphics upgrade

By
Thomas
-
0
489

Nvidia RTX Remix is casting its shadow ahead. Numerous older games have already been spruced up in no time, we analyse the situation

Do you remember the gentleman on the article lead? In 2001, he caused quite a stir. On the one hand with his enemies, whom he pumped full of countless bullets in stylish bullet time. But also with the gamers, who sat in disbelief in front of their tube monitors and couldn”t believe what a graphic spectacle they were seeing there.

Over 20 years later, Max Payne could once again cause a stir And other classics that I love so much, such as Swat 4 or Half-Life 2, are also preparing to make a comeback. The reason for this is called RTX Remix, comes from Nvidia and is supposed to be made available free of charge sometime in 2023. I”ll explain what it”s all about.

What is RTX Remix anyway?

I have already explained the basic features of RTX Remix to you in my column on the occasion of the announcement of this exciting technology. In a nutshell: RTX Remix makes it possible to spice up older DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 era titles with modern graphics technologies such as ray tracing, DLSS and AI upscaled textures. A remaster at the touch of a button, so to speak.

And Button press is to be taken literally: All modders have to do first is start the game they want to play, let RTX Remix run alongside, and then let the algorithm do its work. It analyses render data such as textures, 3D geometry and lighting and converts them into a format that finally ends up in the platform”s editor (Nvidia Omniverse).
There, modders can let off steam to their heart”s content. Objects can be exchanged, textures modified and the lighting raised to a new level via ray tracing. Finally, the result is packaged in a so-called RTX Mod which might suggest that only owners of an Nvidia graphics card can enjoy these fan remasters, but this is not the case.

In fact, it has already been confirmed that all graphics cards that can handle ray tracing via the Vulkan API are compatible. And that”s pretty much all GPU architectures of the last few years – from Nvidia”s RTX 4000 down to the old Maxwell guard, and AMD cards up to the Radeon Vega generation don”t need to worry either.

There are, however, restrictions in terms of the games supported. Officially, not all DX8/DX9 titles are compatible, but only those that still manage without programmable shader routines. This excludes any number of titles that were released later than 2003/2004 – unless you completely overhaul the entire graphics engine, which is already beyond the scope of a fan mod.

First modders are already getting started

And now we come to the core of this article, the news around the topic of RTX Remix: Modders have already started to give the first titles a makeover. In the (Forum of Beyond3D) the tinkerers are lively exchanging ideas and presenting their results.
Among them are games that actually fall under the above-mentioned restriction regarding programmable shaders. So we can hope that more titles than expected can be made to work with RTX Remix.

The focus of the graphical improvements is unsurprisingly ray tracing. After all, games benefit the most from elaborate illumination of the game world – even those that were never developed with this technology in mind. Digital Foundry expert Alex Battaglia posted a selection of pictures worth seeing on Twitter:

One point is already crystallising: If RTX Remix is well received by the game, the results will be amazing. In particular, the lighting of the old 3D levels benefits enormously in some cases, for example in Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield or Swat 4.

Other titles have also been shown and clearly benefit from RTX Remix:

  • Max Payne: In Remedy”s cult shooter, especially the shadows get a decent boost. But reflections on tiles and other surfaces also make an appearance. For copyright reasons we can”t embed the pictures, but you can have a look at them (on the website Wccftech).
  • Half-Life 2: The Valve classic also benefits from RTX Remix, especially in terms of ray-tracing lighting. One user even took the time to create an interactive comparison (which you can watch here).

You can also see the whole thing in motion. In the following video you can also see a lot of visual inconsistencies, but always keep in mind: Here we see a spontaneously created version, not optimised or created by professional modders! And for that, what is shown is quite impressive in some places:

I exult and rejoice. Yes, so far much of what is shown still seems very immature and error-prone. But in my opinion, it should only be a matter of time before we get a veritable round of high-quality fan remakes!

But what do you think? Are your mouths watering at the thought of remasters, too, or are you not interested in the old chestnuts? Feel free to write your thoughts on the subject in the comments!