Path tracing mods for Deus Ex, Dark Messiah, and Half-Life 2 show stunning progress

[Daniel Sims]

Something to look forward to: Nvidia and numerous independent modders have been updating iconic PC gaming classics with next-generation path-traced lighting for the last few years. With the company's new RTX Remix framework, modders are making steady progress in refreshing hits like Deus Ex, Dark Messiah, Half-Life 2, and more.

Modders working with Nvidia's RTX Remix toolset can now utilize DLSS 3.5 ray reconstruction when adding path tracing to older games. The company used the announcement to show its effects on some in-development projects.

RTX Remix entered public beta in January. The framework adds full ray tracing, also known as path tracing, to DirectX 8 and 9 games that use fixed-function pipelines. Tinkerers have shown that it fundamentally alters the lighting in games from around 20 years ago, often producing more natural and dynamic shading. Ray reconstruction further improves graphics by using machine learning to drive the denoising process that is crucial to ray tracing.

Nvidia's showcase highlights the significant changes RTX Remix and ray reconstruction have made to Arkane's 2006 fantasy action game Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Comparison screenshots show dramatic improvements to lighting, textures, model detail, reflections, and shadows.

Meanwhile, modders have spent around a year testing the effects of path tracing on Ion Storm's seminal Deus Ex. While work is still in its early stages, a new renderer from modder Onno Jongbloed recently yielded the best results yet. Interested parties can track the mod's progress on GitHub.

The biggest RTX Remix project currently in progress seeks to provide a fan-made remaster of Half-Life 2. A group of modders at Orbifold Studios are rebuilding the game's materials, textures, models, and other assets to fully utilize path tracing, similar to Nvidia's work on Portal.

Contributors collaborating on GitHub, Moddb, Discord, and Nvidia Omniverse have also made other improvements to make using RTX Remix easier. Mods should now run better on the Steam Deck and other AMD-powered Linux systems. Extra areas receiving enhancements include distant lighting, terrain baking, ghosting, flickering, and more.

Other retro titles to receive path tracing makeovers, some without Nvidia's toolchain, include Max Payne, Doom, Quake, Descent, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Tomb Raider. Modders also recently discovered a hidden but incomplete path-tracing renderer in Capcom's latest AAA release, Dragon's Dogma 2. Another current-generation title showcasing the technology is Black Myth: Wukong, which ships on August 20.

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Path tracing mods for Deus Ex, Dark Messiah, and Half-Life 2 show stunning progress

 

[m4a4]

Ah, now there's a game I should play again. Haven't seen much like it since I've played Dark Messiah...

 

[yRaz]

Just your friendly reminder that most games produced with Ray tracing are just AAA dumpster fires designed to sell you micro transactions.

That said, this does look pretty cool. I want ray tracing in old-school runescape. I'm surprised at how well that games graphics aged. It went from being the joke of the world to having character that makes it a powerhouse of an MMO to this day.

 

[Kirby1]

Dumb to call these tracing mods when 90% of the visual improvement comes from new textures.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Hopefully they can add some more depth to the Deus Ex textures to make them less shiny.

 

[yRaz]

Dumb to call these tracing mods when 90% of the visual improvement comes from new textures.

Oh, yes, the improved lighting definitely comes from texture mods.

 

[Kirby1]

Oh, yes, the improved lighting definitely comes from texture mods.

Do you have eyes? Sure the lighting is better, but the textures are vastly improved. If you had the lighting improvements with the original textures, it would looks like trash. It would look like Quake RTX, which is a neat demo but doesn't actually look good.

 

[yRaz]

Do you have eyes? Sure the lighting is better, but the textures are vastly improved. If you had the lighting improvements with the original textures, it would looks like trash. It would look like Quake RTX, which is a neat demo but doesn't actually look good.

I can't read, I actually don't have eyes. I learned to read braille with my rectum

 

[Kirby1]

I can't read, I actually don't have eyes. I learned to read braille with my rectum

Considering your other posts, I suspect the truth is not far off.

 

[yRaz]

Considering your other posts, I suspect the truth is not far off.

Want to know how I write

 

[gdavid65]

Oh, yes, the improved lighting definitely comes from texture mods.

Shine some fancy lighting on some mud.. and, it still looks like, well, mud.

The two really need to go hand in hand to get the best results.

 

[llamapanda]

Hopefully I'm not alone in thinking that these updates don't work. They might make the games look more 'realistic', but they were made that way for stylistic reasons within the limits of the tech. It was well within everyone's power at the time to crank up the brightness in the lightmaps but they chose not to. Suddenly making everything bright, shiny and dynamic by dropping a new renderer in arguably ruins the original designers' vision.

 

[BbN48]

I want HL2 RTX. I don't want this added for Deus Ex or most other old games.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Meh, the RTX makes it seem like we have gigawatt lights in the scene. Why is RT making everything so bright. The scene has lost all moodiness.

 

[BSim500]

Hopefully I'm not alone in thinking that these updates don't work. They might make the games look more 'realistic', but they were made that way for stylistic reasons within the limits of the tech.

You're definitely not alone. Community enhancement mods are at their best when they remain true to the original. There's Doom, Thief, etc, texture packs out there that do just that and they look great. Community mods at their worst when they take an intentionally gloomy plague ridden dystopian city in a game set entirely at night and try and turn it into a broad daylight street carnival with a huge mismatch between lighting and textures. It's like a new "uncanny valley" effect similar to partial texture mod packs where playing an old game where only half the textures are upgraded and the other half aren't is far more jarring than playing an old game unmodded where everything looks old but you rapidly accommodate to it without it feeling 'weird'. Same reason why if there was an old movie with no Blu-Ray version, I'd rather just watch the DVD than some weird botched hybrid of 50% of the picture being 4k and 50% PAL / NTSC.

 

[Endymio]

Do you have eyes? Sure the lighting is better, but the textures are vastly improved.

In the screenshot above, the textures appear identical -- all the visible improvements are due to lighting. Perhaps you're speaking of some other hypothetical game elsewhere in the multiverse?

 

[yRaz]

In the screenshot above, the textures appear identical -- all the visible improvements are due to lighting. Perhaps you're speaking of some other hypothetical game elsewhere in the multiverse?

Honestly, I think the top one looks better. the bottom reminds me when bloom entered the picture in the middle 2000s