Quake II Rtx coming out June 6th, 2019

GoodBoy

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 29, 2004
Messages
2,737
Looks like the RTX mod is getting a Steam release, it's a free upgrade if you own Quake II. You can play the first 3 levels for free:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/campaigns/quake-II-rtx/

I did the manual install a month or so back when the mod instructions were posted, not sure if I need to undo that or not. Probably not, if I had to guess, it's just a simple install via steam that puts in the files plus a new steam shortcut to the RTX launcher.

Kinda cool tho.

Update: The complete news post along with a sweet list of enhancements:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-june-6-release-date/
 
Last edited:
The problem I'm seeing here is that none of this tech works on AMD. Technically this works on GTX cards, so why not AMD cards? If it uses DXR then any DX12 GPU should work right? Or is Nvidia going the EAX route where their RTX tech works on top of DXR but is therefore restricted to Nvidia hardware?
 
The problem I'm seeing here is that none of this tech works on AMD. Technically this works on GTX cards, so why not AMD cards? If it uses DXR then any DX12 GPU should work right? Or is Nvidia going the EAX route where their RTX tech works on top of DXR but is therefore restricted to Nvidia hardware?
I assume AMD needs DXR drivers.

I guess we'll have to wait for NAVI
 
The problem I'm seeing here is that none of this tech works on AMD.

By all accounts, the only thing holding AMD back is putting DXR in their drivers. They already have support for running ray tracing on their GPUs using existing compute resources... just not through DXR.
 
They've made things way too bright throughout that demo video, wiping out the atmosphere and mood, along with the colour. I would have expected them to exercise better discretion than what that video shows. But, it looks like they were so eager to show lighting that they forgot that tasteful lighting makes a better impression than lighting that just washes the colour out of everything.
 
I know this aint that big of a deal but I think its a fun little bonus for those who got a RTX card. Nothing special, but cool all the same :)
 
Looking forward to Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 RTX updates... not sure if they exist or not but here’s hoping beamdog decides to make it happen.
 
It's definitely brighter and looks more like the Serious Sam desert area than the dark and gritty Quake II that I remember, but that aside, it looks pretty sick.

Now excuse me while I think about the prospect of DOOM, Half-Life, Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and my other old favorites receiving this same treatment.
 
Did they leave the original lighting and add raytraced lighting on top? because that's what it looks like...
 
Now excuse me while I think about the prospect of DOOM, Half-Life, Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and my other old favorites receiving this same treatment.

Add ray tracing, neural-net-upscale the textures, feed the soundstage to an environmental audio modeling engine, perhaps do some light automated tesselation and even do some animation smoothing...

With a little care, there's a lot that can be pulled from older titles without ruining the 'atmosphere'.
 
Looks neat but my 1080Ti for sure won't handle it well. Makes me look forward to when I eventually get a card that can do ray tracing with higher performance.
 
This really shows how demanding RTRT is.
It kills the frame rate on modern games; but it will run well on on 20+ year old one. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Auer
like this
They've made things way too bright throughout that demo video, wiping out the atmosphere and mood, along with the colour. I would have expected them to exercise better discretion than what that video shows. But, it looks like they were so eager to show lighting that they forgot that tasteful lighting makes a better impression than lighting that just washes the colour out of everything.

I thought some of it looked a bit too bright as well. It was just probably 1 guy who added support for the DXR calls and recompiled the exe. To look really amazing, would require some extra work on the light output by things like wall lamps, etc. I'm sure it could be done.

I did just update my nVidia driver last night, and it said it added support for the Quake II RTX... so I should probably try it again on my 1080ti. Tried a month ago was crazy slow.
 
Will this update fix the stupid lack of widescreen support?

This is the only Quake game from my teenage years that doesn't support custom resolutions from the command line, so you can't go outside 4:3 without installing a third-party mod, which seems to be pretty hit-or-miss.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Auer
like this
Will this fix the stupid lack of widescreen support?

This is the only Quake game from my teenage years that doesn't support custom resolutions from the command line, so you can't go outside 4:3 without installing a third-party mod, whichseems to be pretty hit-or-miss.

Wide screen would certainly be cool. Gimme 4k please while at it.
 
I know you can run quake 1 and up with any resolution that isn't supported by the in-game choices, with console switches:
set r_customwidth "1920"
set r_customheight "1080"
set r_mode "-1"

Pretty sure that these can be specified on the start command for the executable, but the syntax is probably different.
I believe that those can be specified in an autoexec.cfg as well, but I'm at work at the moment so can't look at my config or old notes.
 
If NVIDIA were smart they’d put there gameworks team on to adding raytracing features to all the older AAA titles.

I wonder how hard it would be for them to add a database to all of the old popular games and have users simply click a "RTX ON" button for their select title.
 
I wonder how hard it would be for them to add a database to all of the old popular games and have users simply click a "RTX ON" button for their select title.

I feel like it can't be that hard. They added the ambient occlusion option in the control panel so you can add at least some level of AO to older titles. Adding some basic level of raytracing can't be that hard, I would think.
 
I feel like it can't be that hard. They added the ambient occlusion option in the control panel so you can add at least some level of AO to older titles. Adding some basic level of raytracing can't be that hard, I would think.
and reshade has it so im sure it could be implemented but I think they(and amd) might be choosing not to due to the massive performance hit.
 
Looks like they are working on supporting Resident Evil 2 also...so cool what it can do for these older games!

resident-evil-2-remake-comparison-old-vs-new-1.jpg


resident-evil-2-remake-comparison-old-vs-new-2.jpg


resident-evil-2-remake-comparison-old-vs-new-3.jpg


resident-evil-2-remake-comparison-old-vs-new-4.jpg
 
Looks great, I actually don't mind companie re-releasing old titles with DXR support.

Agreed. RT tech doesn't look like that big of deal in modern games since developers have become so good at faking all the lighting and reflections, that you hardly notice.

But these old game where it didn't look so good to start with, it is probably easier to retrofit them with RT lighting, than it is to go back and fake all the effects.

I am thinking of Jedi Knight II: Outcast. Source was released, and it's based on Quake 3 engine, which also had source released....

This would actually be a much bigger deal that getting RT in new games for me, as I get everything from GOG.
 
Back
Top