Quake 2 to get official ray-tracing update - Nvidia releases demo of excessively-bright RT Quake 2

[Delicieuxz]

 

On June 6, Quake II on Steam will receive an update that gives it support for ray-tracing. If you already own Quake II on Steam, you'll get the update for free. I hope and expect that the update will also improve Quake II's stability on modern OSes and hardware.

 

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/campaigns/quake-II-rtx/

https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/27/18641307/quake-2-rtx-ray-tracing-remaster-download-nvidia

 

 

So, what I think is...

 

Quake 2 being updated with support for ray-tracing: Awesome

Losing the original colour and atmosphere: Bad

 

The red lighting replaced with normal Earth-like yellow lighting, I don't get. That's taking away something that  defines Quake 2's atmosphere and demonstrates the game takes place on another planet.

 

There was a different video of ray-tracing in Quake 2 released, by someone else, in January. That video kept the original game's light colouring. 

 

http://brechpunkt.de/q2vkpt/

 

I'm not sure if the RT update to Steam Quake 2 is a product of this other Q2 RT project. Maybe it's the same one, just worked on further and released in partnership with Bethesda and Nvidia.

 

[Levent]

its funny how this game will now require more than 20x more processing power after that update.

[ThePD]

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

its funny how this game will now require more than 20x more processing power after that update.

More like 200-1000x. I really like the raytracing but the loss of the red atmosphere does completely drain from 'feel' the game had.

[Delicieuxz]

4 minutes ago, Mr. horse said:

Do I have to use this? is there a way to go back to the original lighting and graphics?

I'm sure the RT will only be an option and not forced.

 

I don't know about the textures, though.

 

Quote

Improved Global Illumination rendering, with three selectable quality presets, including two-bounce GI

 

Time of day options that radically change the appearance of some levels

 

New weapon models & textures

 

Real-time reflectivity of the player and weapon model on water and glass surfaces, and player model shadows, for owners of the complete game (the original Shareware release does not include player models)

 

All 3,000+ original game textures have been updated with a mix of Q2XP mod-pack textures and our own enhancements

 

Updated effects with new sprites and particle animations

 

Dynamic lighting for items such as blinking lights, signs, switches, elevators and moving objects

 

Maybe it will be a completely separate game installation.

[Trixanity]

[Emberstone]

Gonna make a backup of my Steam install just in case. Q2 doesn't require Steam to run.

 

But this looks interesting. Hopefully it runs better on my 1070 than the other version of Quake 2 RT does.

[RejZoR]

If it's full ray traced scene like in that Q2VKPT, it's gonna run like crap on anything but RTX cards. If it's a mix, then it's possible to get reasonable framerate even on something like GTX 1080Ti... I guesss we'll see quite soon. I have the GTX 1080Ti and I own Quake 2 on Steam so I'll give it a try. But they mention Global Illumination too which is "worrying" because it has a far greater performance hit than just reflective stuff...

[Franck]

25 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

Gonna make a backup of my Steam install just in case. Q2 doesn't require Steam to run.

 

But this looks interesting. Hopefully it runs better on my 1070 than the other version of Quake 2 RT does.

The mod for quake RT works a bit slow on a 680 GTX i can't believe it's that awful on the 1070. Unless something wrong in the implementation.

[Nicnac]

Aight I wanna have Star Wars episode 1: racer in ray tracing now

 

[TVwazhere]

How relevant is Quake II anymore? It's awesome to see RT implemented into games, but does Q2 still have a large following of consistent players or have they all moved on to other games like DOOM Multiplayer?

[williamcll]

How about RT for Source engine?

[RejZoR]

12 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

How relevant is Quake II anymore? It's awesome to see RT implemented into games, but does Q2 still have a large following of consistent players or have they all moved on to other games like DOOM Multiplayer?

It's one of best Quake games imo. I never really liked Quake 1 and it's typical generic "hellish" theme that was the same like almost all the games at the time. Quake 2 changing the theme to Strogg lore really made it an amazing experience. Alien planet with enemies that are organic and machines fused in one, a lot of gore and whole atmosphere of industrial age civilization just hit the nail right. Especially parts with captured soldiers screaming in insanity and all the machines processing them to turn them into Strogg soldiers. Only thing cooler than entire Quake 2 was the Stroggification of the player in Quake 4. That shit was insane.

[Delicieuxz]

12 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

How relevant is Quake II anymore? It's awesome to see RT implemented into games, but does Q2 still have a large following of consistent players or have they all moved on to other games like DOOM Multiplayer?

But, how will people be able to play newer games with full RT? They'll be able to actually run Q2 in high-enough FPS.

 

I'd like to see Far Cry 1 re-released with RT.

[Nicnac]

7 hours ago, williamcll said:

How about RT for Source engine?

Csgo is still gonna look shit lmao

[maartendc]

8 hours ago, williamcll said:

How about RT for Source engine?

That would be cool! Half-life 2 in ray tracing. Or even for half-life 1.

 

I must say, that quake 2 demo looks impressive. Although it looks more like quake 3 with the brighter lighting.

[MadDuke]

Quake 2 timedemo is actually running in something like 90 fps on an 2080 Ti. 

 

Let that sink in.   Ray Tracing, done really good will be available. But probably in 3 generations from now.  

[Beskamir]

On 5/28/2019 at 11:54 AM, Nicnac said:

Aight I wanna have Star Wars episode 1: racer in ray tracing now

 

oh so like this thing? (technically not ray traced yet but it's in UE4 so it should be very easy to add/enable assuming the source code is somewhere)

[RoseLuck462]

Quake 2 was one of the first games I bought on Steam, this kicks ass!

[Nicnac]

1 hour ago, Beskamir said:

oh so like this thing? (technically not ray traced yet but it's in UE4 so it should be very easy to add/enable assuming the source code is somewhere)

Yep seen that video ^^ I can’t find a working download link tho

[Beskamir]

1 hour ago, Nicnac said:

Yep seen that video ^^ I can’t find a working download link tho

The video I linked has a link to it. ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/17VzpRsONhPKnQqYdzO28PlYpJTwBpYre/view )