It’s been almost two years since Nvidia revealed Half-Life 2 RTX, with no sign of a release date since. However, it seems the launch of the remaster could be drawing close. Announced at GDC, Developer Orbifold Studios will soon release a playable demo of the mod, following the arrival of Nvidia’s RTX Remix toolkit.
The demo will be available to download via Steam on Tuesday March 18. Speaking to Club386, GeForce Product Manager Nyle Usmani shared that it will feature around two hours of gameplay. In that time, you’ll be able to explore the “majority” of Ravenholm, and spend a stint in Nova Prospekt.
Half-Life 2 RTX will support DLSS 4 out of the box, which will come in handy for running the plethora of ray traced effects the game offers. Nvidia claims that its new performance enhancing suite will deliver up to 2x faster path tracing in RTX Remix games compared to DLSS 3.5. Other improvements to texture streaming and the introduction of a neural radiance cache also improve performance by 0.4x, making for a 2.4x jump overall.
Taking a closer look at some of the technologies at play in Half-Life 2 RTX evokes feelings of awe I had looking at Valve’s first-person shooter for the first time over 20 years ago. Yes, it’s really been that long since Gordon Freeman’s grand return and the debut of the Source game engine.
Covering some of the recent additions to the mod, Usmani shared screenshots of RTX Skin. This is the first instance of ray traced subsurface scattering, an effect that mimics the way light interacts with skin. Seeing it in action on a Headcrab vividly brings the horror of its grotesque flesh to life, emphasising the detail of its texture through more nuanced lighting.
Also debuting in the game is RTX Volumetrics. This feature does what it says on the tin, using ray tracing to render how light and shadow interact with volumetric elements like fog and smoke. Turning on the effect makes Father Grigori’s iconic entrance all the more spectacular as his silhouette and shadow beam through the smoke of the fire pit below.
I can’t wait to engross myself in Half-Life 2 RTX demo as a life-long fan of the series. I am curious how well the game will hold up on older graphics cards, though, considering Portal RTX requires a GeForce RTX 3060 at minimum. Here’s hoping the optimisations described earlier can pave the way for less-powerful pixel pushers to jump on this hype train bound for City 17.
If seeing all this path tracing goodness make its way into this PC classic has you excited, you’ll soon be able to give your own favourites of old the same treatment using the same tools as Orbifold Studios. Nvidia RTX Remix is finally leaving closed beta and is now publicly available to download.
Modders have been busying themselves with the toolkit behind the scenes for a while now. Nvidia tells me that there are now 150 compatible games, and 350 RTX Remix mod projects on the go. You can try them for yourself via the application’s ModDB page. Given my limited skills with game development, I’ll likely stick to enjoying the fruits of others’ labour but I am excited to see how the community can transform older games.
