Half-Life mod adds real-time ray tracing to Valve's seminal first-person shooter

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: The ray traced release trailer showcases a version of Half-Life with enriched visuals that add a new dimension of depth to the nearly 25-year-old game. Everything is still the same at its core, it just looks a lot better with the mod applied.

The long-awaited unofficial ray tracing mod for Half-Life has landed.

A little over a year ago, modder Sultim "sultim_t" Tsyrendashiev shared a YouTube teaser for a new project that adds real-time, hardware accelerated path tracing to Valve's seminal first-person shooter. The mod, a reengineered version of an earlier effort, promised enhancements like reflections, global illumination, refractions and soft shadows.

sultim_t said a playable build and accompanying source code would be released on GitHub when it is ready. "These things, they take time," the modder cautioned.

Fast-forward a little over a year and sultim_t has delivered.

sultim_t is quickly developing a solid reputation in the modding community. Previous projects include ray tracing mods for Serious Sam, Quake and Doom, and joins official mods like Quake II RTX from Nvidia and Bethesda. Digital Foundry described sultim_t's Quake project as less of a mod and more of a full-on ray tracing remaster.

Everything you need to get up and running with the Half-Life ray tracing mod (minus the game itself) has been uploaded to GitHub, complete with instructions on how to install it and a list of known issues. sultim_t warns that some users might experience incompatibility issues with AMD GPUs and further notes that the Hazard Course is not yet supported.

You'll need a copy of Half-Life, of course. sultim_t recommends the Steam version, which can currently be had for $9.99 via the digital distribution platform.

Half-Life has been the source for several mods and remakes since its debut way back in 1998. Among the best is Black Mesa, a fan-made reimagining of the original that eventually earned Valve's blessing and launched on Steam in 2020. It is priced at $19.99 and has more than 85,000 reviews, of which 95 percent are positive.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97709-half-life-mod-adds-real-time-ray-tracing.html

 

[RudyBob]

Thanks for seminal as opposed to iconic

 

[envirovore]

Very neat little mod, looks great. Returning to the first hallway after the test chamber blows up and seeing all the little shards of glass on the floor throw reflections, or just the refraction through glass even...it's quite nice.

FSR support is native for AMD users.
NV users will probably still want DLSS, I tried with both DLSS 2.5.1 and 3.1.1, slightly less ghosting with 2.5.1.
For reference, Ryzen 5700x and 10GB 3080 (OC'd) - Native 4K ~40FPS. Quality DLSS ~60+FPS (dipped to 59 a couple times during the intro tram ride).

Here's hoping he does Unreal next.

 

[nismo91]

There's so much mods on the the half life franchise I'm surprised they haven't come up with a HL2 Episode 3 and 4 and so on. look the OG HL is great, the best part was actually the perspective addon which was opposing force and blue shift. but I just wish there's more story to make instead of doing RT mods, VR mods and so on.

 

[Kotters]

These classics are the best use of raytracing so far. Quake and Mario are other good examples. I'd rather have these than AAA games that RT a tiny portion of the game and run like crap.

 

[Stingy McDuck]

There's so much mods on the the half life franchise I'm surprised they haven't come up with a HL2 Episode 3 and 4 and so on. look the OG HL is great, the best part was actually the perspective addon which was opposing force and blue shift. but I just wish there's more story to make instead of doing RT mods, VR mods and so on.

You have mods for HL2 like Entropy Zero 1 and 2 and gems like Hunting Down The Freeman, that expand the Half-Life universe.

 

[Paul Ivan]

Ahm does Black mesa have ray tracing I'd rather play that one with ray traced

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Now you can see every polygon better lit! Wow! What a world we live in.

I can expect the RT version to require, at minimum a 3090Ti to be able to provide decent enough frame rates once you flip the switch for RT.

 

[Lozzy]

>> Ahm does Black mesa have ray tracing I'd rather play that one with ray traced

Yeah exactly, seems kinda pointless to RT the original instead of Black Mesa

 

[envirovore]

Ahm does Black mesa have ray tracing I'd rather play that one with ray traced

>> Ahm does Black mesa have ray tracing I'd rather play that one with ray traced

Yeah exactly, seems kinda pointless to RT the original instead of Black Mesa

And this here summarizes whats wrong with 'gamers' today, that sense of self-entitlement.
One guy spent over a year overhauling a game to add ray tracing for free and people still ***** about "why not this or that instead?" without a single bit of further thought put into the amount of work or complexity of it, or just being thankful that someone is willing to take their free time and do something like this for any existing games at all.

If one person can do this for HL, Quake, Doom, and Serious Sam then why haven't one of you two jumped on getting the Black Mesa Ray Traced ball going and do it yourselves? Report back next year with your progress.

 

[rsmith222]

And this here summarizes whats wrong with 'gamers' today, that sense of self-entitlement.
One guy spent over a year overhauling a game to add ray tracing for free and people still ***** about "why not this or that instead?" without a single bit of further thought put into the amount of work or complexity of it, or just being thankful that someone is willing to take their free time and do something like this for any existing games at all.

If one person can do this for HL, Quake, Doom, and Serious Sam then why haven't one of you two jumped on getting the Black Mesa Ray Traced ball going and do it yourselves? Report back next year with your progress.

He only cured cancer. He didn't save the world.

 

[yannus]

I'd like to see that with a global white texture, to really see the quality of the so-called ray tracing. The ugly low res textures prevent me to really grasp the extent of the improvement.