Half-Life 2 RTX gets a new stunning trailer, RTX Remix Open Beta launches later this month

Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project is a community-developed remaster of one of the most celebrated PC games of all time, with the global development team of modders at Orbifold Studios using the powerful RTX Remix platform to present a fully path traced and rar traced version of the game.

The latest trailer, which debuted during NVIDIA's CES 2024 presentation, showcases the memorable survival horror and zombie-inspired location of Ravenholm with full ray-traced lighting, DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, RTX IO, Reflex, and remastered assets, models, and in-game materials. It looks incredible, like a full-blown remake.

Orbifold Studios is a team of 65 modders, so this is a pretty big project (the team is hand-building enhanced assets), but thanks to RTX Remix, the speed of progress has been remarkable. With RTX Remix, anyone can "remix" a classic game with the power of ray-tracing and generative AI - and the NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta begins January 22.

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RTX Remix allows anyone to insert a classic compatible PC game, which is then converted into the Omniverse Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) format. From there, it can be opened and modded, supporting Omniverse-connected applications like Blender or Adobe Substance. NVIDIA also includes its own high-quality USD assets for use.

The real power of RTX Remix is the combination of modern physically-based rendering (PBR) assets and generative AI texture tools that allow for full ray tracing to be applied to any game. It's what makes NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios' Portal with RTX look stunning. RTX Remix's Generative AI Texture Tools powered by Tensor Cores in GeForce RTX GPUs not only upscaled textures with new detail but also created roughness maps to ensure elements like bricks and rough surfaces transform into 3D objects.

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RTX Remix isn't meant to "do it all" instead, it aims to make the remastering and modding process easier. "AI-enhanced textures from RTX Remix are a huge upgrade over the simple color textures found in classic games," NVIDIA writes. "[AI-enhanced textures give] artists more time to turn their attention towards manually rebuilding hero assets that excite the imagination and define a game's visuals."

You can also convert existing 'basic light sources' in classic PC games to dynamic, realistic lighting with RTX Remix - it's incredibly powerful and a game-changer for the PC modding community. NVIDIA notes that "over 10 billion game mods are downloaded each year," so expect RTX Remix to become huge in the coming years.

The RTX Remix Open Beta will be open source and free for all modders when it launches on January 22. Head here to sign up and be notified.

All the NVIDIA news from CES 2024.

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