Nvidia Creates New Studio To Remaster Classic Games With Raytracing

odditory

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"We’re cherry-picking some of the greatest titles from the past decades and bringing them into the ray tracing age. Thus, we’ll be giving them state-of-the-art visuals while keeping the gameplay that made them great. The NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios team is picking up the challenge starting with a title that you know and love but we can’t talk about here.”

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvid...er-classic-pc-games-with-ray-tracing-effects/


Job listing: https://nvidia.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/NVIDIAExternalCareerSite/job/US-CA-Santa-Clara/Producer--Lightspeed-Studios---Gaming_JR1925017
 
If they're just slapping on ray tracing for very old games they will still look like crap and if the gameplay is dated, probably won't be worth playing. Kind of like how that Quake RTX thing looks like utter garbage even if it has ray tracing. Cool for a demo standpoint, but don't expect people to pay money for it.

Now if these are proper remakes/upgrades that happen to add ray tracing then it is a worthwhile effort. I'd love to see Mass Effect updated with a better inventory system, probably the camera angle work from the 2nd and 3rd game, some more diversity in the planets that you visit, tweaks to combat. Update the graphics and put some RTX on and I'll be happy.
 
Cool idea but I'm not confident we will see many big studio games show up here. I don't see the big publishers doing remasters without their hands being the only hands in the jar.

Unless Nvidia is so desperate to make RT a thing before Sony and MS slap it into consoles they are willing to bank roll everything themselves handy all profits to the publisher.
 
I would have suggested Fallout 4 but until various bugs are fixed it gets a no from me.
 
I bought a MSI GTX 970 Gaming card in superb condition over at ebay and it arrived earlier this week. Can play Metro Exodus on high settings and only get occasional tiny pause here and there (not sure why, Afterburner shows usage for both CPU and GPU to be under 80% when the pauses occur). Also plays all other games (Andromeda, etc) on high settings 70+ fps @ 1080p so I'm good to go for the next year or three.

I can wait on the ray tracing stuff :barefoot:
 
The ultimate vehicles are the System Shock titles currently in development. If I were NV I'd allocate a couple devs to be fully embedded and make a killer showcase.

You're already eliminating massive world problems by virtue of being on a station, and the atmospherics are far more likely to be actually noticed and appreciated vs running-for-life in a online shooter. And if it did slow down, the pacing of those games doesn't make it a deal-breaker. Remember the FPS we had when SS1 came out?
 
Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Deus ex: they all use the same engine, three birds, one stone!

They would still have to run each of the levels / maps per each game through their supercomputer to precompute the rays. That's my understanding.
 
Good idea imo. The most important thing in graphics is lighting. They'll have to do quality shooters with absolutely no changes to the gameplay, though. I'd start with Quake 3 engine games. Q3 and RTCW would a fantastic start for many reasons, many of which are technical. No gameplay changes whatsoever. Just RT. The last thing we need is more generic RPG crap, now with RT.
 
“Quake II RTX on” on my rig, 32 frames per second on my EVGA 2080 at 3440x1440 resolution

“Quake II RTX off “on my rig, 1000fps (capped by the Quake II engine)

I’ll give you one guess which way I’d rather play.

Nvidia, fix that FPS nonsense first! If it needs more hardware — it needs more hardware. 32 FPS on a 22 year old game? Get out of here.
 
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I bought a MSI GTX 970 Gaming card in superb condition over at ebay and it arrived earlier this week. Can play Metro Exodus on high settings and only get occasional tiny pause here and there (not sure why, Afterburner shows usage for both CPU and GPU to be under 80% when the pauses occur). Also plays all other games (Andromeda, etc) on high settings 70+ fps @ 1080p so I'm good to go for the next year or three.

I can wait on the ray tracing stuff :barefoot:

Sometimes things like that are loading files from your hdd/ssd into ram.

I hope they do the jedi knight games and xwing vs tie fighter...
 
Good idea imo. The most important thing in graphics is lighting. They'll have to do quality shooters with absolutely no changes to the gameplay, though. I'd start with Quake 3 engine games. Q3 and RTCW would a fantastic start for many reasons, many of which are technical. No gameplay changes whatsoever. Just RT. The last thing we need is more generic RPG crap, now with RT.


Yeah, I've always hated the light maps used in the Quake 3 engine; every other part of the game looks modern except the lightning and shadows. An RTX update would look way better than the one for Quake 2.
 
Would be cool if they worked with some of the studios that are also using engines from the 90's to make games.
 
long shot, but a re-release of Oni with DXR, high-rez textures, updated particle effects, and controller support would be awesome. The gameplay has really held up, even today there's nothing I can think of that matches the smoothness and pace of the hand-to-hand combat.

i agree that Doom 3 with RT needs to happen. Unreal would be neat too but tbh the lighting in the original was pretty good, and the full-scene reflections still look way better than the screenspace crap we're stuck with today

Quake 1 RTX too plz? F**k, some of those levels would look stunning with full RT shadows+GI+AO :eek:
 
BF1942 DC RTX

Yup 1942 would be great!

1942-3.png


Wrong 1942?
 
I still wanna play through Anachronox and Prey (2006) so those would get my vote. They kinda flew under the radar, I don't care to replay Unreal or whatever obvious popular choice yet again...
 
Nvidia trying to crowbar RTX back into the conversation it seems. Will people really buy RTX cards to play old games ?
 
Nvidia trying to crowbar RTX back into the conversation it seems. Will people really buy RTX cards to play old games ?

Not sure why anyone would be against this. I think it's great to boost the visuals on some old titles. Definitely a nice bonus for RTX.

Also let's be realistic. Ray Tracing will be standard from everyone next year. Intels new GPUs will support it, new Consoles will support it, NVidia already supports it, and no doubt any new higher end parts from AMD will support it.

RT is a fact of gaming visuals going forward.
 
The desperation is real. Wow. NVidia spent so much money on RTX and does not think current and future games are putting enough resources into adding RTX into those games that they felt the need to go back in time. This is like making a movie prequel. lol
For fanboys: Yeah, it's cool. Still not buying an RTX card.
 
Would love to get hl2 and freelancer raytraced. Hope they find some awesome classics. I would jump on this.

You just mentioned two titles that resonate with me.

I've probably got the most screen time with these two classics amongst all my "legacy" games...along with 2004's Sid Meier's Pirates and Acclaim's Re-Volt.

Another fun one would be No One Lives Forever 2.
 
If they remastered the X-wing and Tie Fighter series, I’d buy a 2080 Ti (or whatever their current high-end replacement for the 2080 Ti will be) on the day of release.
 
Not sure why anyone would be against this. I think it's great to boost the visuals on some old titles. Definitely a nice bonus for RTX.

Also let's be realistic. Ray Tracing will be standard from everyone next year. Intels new GPUs will support it, new Consoles will support it, NVidia already supports it, and no doubt any new higher end parts from AMD will support it.

RT is a fact of gaming visuals going forward.

I didn't say I was against it.. I said this seems like Nvidia trying to keep RTX relevant because clearly the whole thing is losing steam. A perk for existing RTX customers obviously but will someone actually go out and buy an RTX card to replay the first Baldur's Gate or some shit like that just for RTX on?
 
I didn't say I was against it.. I said this seems like Nvidia trying to keep RTX relevant because clearly the whole thing is losing steam. A perk for existing RTX customers obviously but will someone actually go out and buy an RTX card to replay the first Baldur's Gate or some shit like that just for RTX on?

That argument holds no water. You could use this argument back when it was only NVidia announced to be doing RT.

But losing steam argument fails completely, when next year both new consoles will have RT HW, and all three GPU makers will almost certainly as well. It just doesn't make sense anymore.
 
Medal of honor allied assault and combat flight simulator 2 would look killer if done right. Ive spent more time playing those two than any games since. I would definitely rebuy them both...probably get my ass handed to me by the kids but it would still be fun to try.
 
“Quake RTX on” on my rig, 32 frames per second on my EVGA 2080 at 3440x1440 resolution

“Quake II RTX off “on my rig, 1000fps (capped by the Quake II engine)

I’ll give you one guess which way I’d rather play.

Nvidia, fix that FPS nonsense first! If it needs more hardware — it needs more hardware. 32 FPS on a 22 year old game? Get out of here.

The age of the game doesn't really matter. Quake II is fully Path Traced. That's all the Ray Tracing lightening effects, shadows, reflections, refractions, ambient occlusion, and diffuse global illumination.

And I know which one I would play, the non Ray traced Quake II looks terrible when you go back to it after playing the Ray Traced version.
 
I didn't say I was against it.. I said this seems like Nvidia trying to keep RTX relevant because clearly the whole thing is losing steam. A perk for existing RTX customers obviously but will someone actually go out and buy an RTX card to replay the first Baldur's Gate or some shit like that just for RTX on?

It's losing steam and that's why both next gen consoles have announced support?

Not many people will buy an RTX card just to play some remastered game. But it's another perk and they add up.
 
to make older games look good wouldnt that mean reworking most of the graphics assests to make them higher res esp the textures?
 
Well, RTX isn't the only implementation of ray tracing. Consoles definitely aren't using nVidia's brand of raytracing.

They also aren’t using Nvidia’s brand of shading or texturing or memory compression. So what?
 
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