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Nvidia plans RTX remasters for more classic PC games

Eric Frederiksen
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When I talk about ray tracing, I describe video game graphics as a big magic trick. And it turns out that game developers have gotten very good at making believable illusions – so much so that Nvidia’s ray-tracing tech doesn’t stand out like it should. When we apply it to lo-fi games like Minecraft or old-school ones like Quake II, though, it’s impossible to miss.

Nvidia launches RTX remaster program

Nvidia has apparently taken notice of this. According to a job posting from Nvidia, (via DSOGaming) “Nvidia is kicking off an exciting new game remastering program.” The company plans to select “some of the greatest titles from the past decades,” bringing them into the ray-tracing age.

This isn’t an up-res or a remake, though. I wouldn’t expect higher-resolution textures or anything like that. Instead, RTX itself will be the belle of the ball. Nvidia wants the program to give the games “state-of-the-art visuals while keeping the game gameplay that made them great.”

Nvidia RTX remaster - Quake II RTX

The job posting is looking for a producer at Nvidia’s Lightspeed Studios. The producer would lead production on the remaster project. It seems like this is something Nvidia plans to work on for a while.

It seems like Nvidia is watching gamers’ response to new games that use RTX technology carefully. At the current level of fidelity, ray tracing isn’t quite there yet, but it also sounds like it needs to be out in the hands of the public to get it to where it should be; that’s no different from previous visual effects, like shaders, which started as an exclusive feature before eventually going mainstream.

Nvidia is already working on a title, it says, but won’t say what other than to call it “beloved.” As Quake II shows, though, it seems like just about any old game from around that time and onward can benefit from this kind of thing. It’s likely we’ll see a lot of shooters and action games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as those make the heaviest use of outdoor spaces and creative lighting in general. We could imagine games like Half-Life 2, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Deus Ex, and Battlefield 1942 getting the remaster treatment. What would you like to see get attention? Would any of these games push you into buying that RTX card?

Question & Answers (22)

Have a question? Our panel of experts will answer your queries. Post your Question
  1. Is Portal too nIs Portal too new? I’d like to see that ray-traced.ew? I’d like to see that ray-traced.

    • I don’t know why my spelling suddenly changed when I clicked post, but that was supposed to say “Is Portal too new?”

  2. This isn’t helping game remasters, it is hurting them, as Nvidia is simply buying out existing game remasters for exclusive content, like Minecraft.

    Minecraft was supposed to get a HD update, but that was cancelled for Nvidia’s exclusive RTX mode. This obviously upset the community looking forward to the HD update.

    Meanwhile, we have the SEUS Minecraft mod that enables Raytracing on existing Nvidia and AMD cards, proving you don’t need RTX for raytracing.

    Nvidia may appear to be releasing content for RTX owners, but in reality, they are pulling an EPIC Game Store for their RTX content. It’s not like RTX is even a real standard, as it is a proprietary raytracing method, like Gsync vs Freesync. When “freetracing” comes out, we will have yet another stupid vendor war.

  3. Half-Life 2 is a great suggestion. Old enough to benefit substantially, young enough not to look horrendously clunky, and with plenty of deliciously wibbly reflective surfaces and light sources.

    The Portal games would be ace too, come to think of it – especially Portal 2 and its gloopy goopy fluids.

  4. “I wouldn’t expect higher-resolution textures or anything like that”

    – It might happen out of necessity. When Nvidia/Lightspeed did the Quake 2 RTX remaster, they needed to update the assets so it would look right with physically based rendering (mostly to remove baked shadows in the textures). I think there was a secondary reason too. If f the source texture resolution is too low, I think physically based rendering would look weird. In Quake 2’s case, luckily there were already updated textures made available by other users so they didn’t have to start from scratch.

  5. How about Pharaoh? As a game that doesn’t require high FPS, they could really focus on making it beautiful. And I really loved that game….

    • There is a game under development now called Builders of Egypt. It looks like an upgraded version of Pharaoh, and it looks amazing. Videos on Steam.

    • I honestly don’t see it being much of a help. Outside of making even more convincing lightning/shadowing effects than current MediaVPs pack.

  6. Untangle that NOLF knot and get me some ray-traced Cate Archer and I will shill for RTX until the end of time.

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