this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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[–] __v 28 points 2 years ago (3 children)

RTX On/Off feels really dishonest here given the assets swap as well.

[–] pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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?

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Then id like to see the same better assets with rtx and without. Those alone would make an incredible difference.

[–] pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 4 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure how easy that is with RTX Remix. IIRC the assets aren't actually added to the game itself, but rather they get injected into the render-pipeline.

[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

[–] TheFrogThatFlies@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] czl@lemmy.noice.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Very wrong, without proper materials, light bounces would make no sense (if there would be even any)

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

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).

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

There was a setting for that in portal rtx, I'm sure it will be in hl2 rtx as well.

[–] SeismicNote@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

So we'll get another old game where everything looks oddly shiny instead of oddly dull?

[–] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That’s not what ray tracing is about at all. Reflections, imo, are the least interesting part of ray tracing.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

shame most people who implement it don't agree

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[–] ValorUp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate? Thanks!

[–] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

Ray tracing is about implementing light and representing its behavior. Because reflections are, of course, a huge part of that it gets a lot of attention. Ray traced reflections allow things that aren’t otherwise on screen to be reflected without resorting to other clever tricks.

But other ray traced features implement light in (my opinion) more interesting ways. Global illumination, ambient occlusion, and shadows can all be implemented via RT and because they’re not limited by screen space information can be more accurate and, thus, impressive.

Light and objects in the world look like they belong and just look “right”. The way a sliver of sunlight can subtly light a room or the way an object appears grounded with accurate shadows can make non-RT lighting look wrong.

Check out Digital Foundry’s video on Metro Exodus Enhanced and they’ll surely go into some examples here.

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[–] timconspicuous@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago

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

[–] ErinCrush@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] Its_Always_420@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Wish they'd do Hal-Life 1 with ray tracing because my video card might actually be able to run that one.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There is Black Mesa if you're looking for a Half Life 1 remake. Not sure if there is raytracing in it though.

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago

Black Mesa was so fucking good it's ridiculous.

[–] Its_Always_420@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

If it did have it, it'd almost certainly be too much for my RTX 3060. Portal RTX didn't work too well.

[–] NeroRecursive@jlai.lu 6 points 2 years ago

Don’t worry, even with a beefy config it doesn’t run very well (talking i9 10th gen, 32gb ddr4 and 3080RTX) so I doubt even half life 2 will run decently.

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[–] Wahots@pawb.social 2 points 2 years ago

It's not RTX but that was a fucking 10/10 experience. Xen knocked my socks off.

[–] Hasuris@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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

[–] BigVault@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] BallShapedMan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

You son of a bitch, I'm in!

[–] d4rknusw1ld@artemis.camp 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Now they have to do HL3 right….right?

[–] shadowSprite@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Alto@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Wait I thought we all agreed HLA is HL3 in spirit

[–] Maximilious@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Alyx is a prequel to HL2, so it can't be part of the episodic release. There were some cliffnotes a previous lead storyboarder had released on the loose plot of HL3 some years ago. It ended with Gman retiring freeman and employing Alyx if I recall correctly.

[–] shadowSprite@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Yes and spoilers (since I don't know how to cover a comment)

The post credit scene of Alyx shows you as Gordan at the end of HL2E2. Only Gman has now taken Alyx and you as Gordon are being handed Gordon's crowbar and are told "come on Gordon, we have work to do"

[–] atocci@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

What ever happened to Project Borealis?

[–] Techie@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Awesome, really looking forward to this!

[–] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I hope they do the episodes as well.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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...)

[–] simple@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

It's not out yet, this is just an announcement

[–] nickname@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, cool project but let me see something outside of that room!

[–] pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago

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.

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