This is genuinely something I cannot understand about Ubisoft, they have one of the most perfect games out there to utilise ray-tracing and showcase it beautifully and year after year they let it rot, Michael Ironside isn't getting any God damn younger.
Chaos Theory's graphics on the original Xbox looked very next gen back in the day with the clever lighting. I would love to see a RTX remix on that. I like to see it with FEAR, Thief 1 & 2 games as well. Heck, pretty much any game that primarily focused heavily on lighting and shadows back in the day. Take a look at Doom 3 Raytracing.
I think they would have to remake the whole game to make it work. Baked shadows in SC games are not only for visuals, they determine the gameplay features as well as they are carefully planned in the level design. Transition to path tracing would bring fundamental changes for the game. But a stealth game like Splinter Cell or Thief with full path traced lighting would be super interesting to see.
i'm also excited for their Neural Texture Compression tech that helps reduce the size and memory cost of textures and materials while keeping the quality almost identical.
The important thing here is that modders have to partner with artists for these mods to really work out. I love to see Max Payne with upgraded graphics, but the "all wet effect", that is just a very high specularity to make the materials pop, is a mistake most do when trying to go to RTX territory.
Specularity yes, but specifically ultra high gloss or ultra low roughness depending on which version of PBR you subscribe too. As you say the all wet/all mirror effect is very kitsch and distracting. Better shadows and GI are far more important IMHO.
This stuff looks insane! It makes Max Payne look like how I remembered it when I first played it back in the 2000s. I really can't wait to see how far this game-enhancing technology will go in making old games look cool again.
This kind of reminds me of the old 3Dfx era, where that generation of graphics card suddenly provided things like transparency and texture filtering which totally changed the feel that games had. When games started to support it, you for some time had two versions, the software one and the hardware accelerated one.
IMO Painkiller game back from 2004 could really use an RTX Remix touch. This game has a unique narrative, where every single level is completely different. From Cemetery in the nowhere of Poland to Amusement park, from Cathedral to Asylum, from Opera to Babylon to the literal Hell. From dark, almost horror-like experiences to colorful and bright. It has so much potential in visual enhancements!
Reflectance looks cool and fancy, but eventually folks who crave realistic visuals will settle into a more diffuse aesthetic. The real world is dirty and dusty
@@fanovaohsmutsThere's a reason for that; most people find it very attractive. Why else do you think almost all makes of sports cars have reflective surfaces? That's not a coincidence, dude.
There's a lot of classic games that maybe were not massive hits that they'd get a remaster, but I enjoyed them enough to get the RTX treatment. Tron 2.0, Freelancer, FEAR, Prey (2006), Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead 1&2, Prototype, Bioshock Infinite, etc. It's always fun to go back to the older games when they get a fresh coat of paint.
I can't recall where, maybe in a 2klicksphilip video about HL2 Remix, but I saw need for speed underground 2 named, which seems interesting because you can't seem to buy that game any where on pc.
Did my guy actually just suggest that L4D wasn't a massive hit? 💀 Bioshock infinite too? I mean I know the Bioshock community cried because it wasn't underwater, but the game still did really well, and hardly flew under the radar
Everything just looks shiny now. The games were art directed to fit the tech at the time. For the most part they would need to be redone by hand to capture the original intention
The only reasons textures are like that when showing off ray tracing are either because it's easier to show reflections than everything else RTX does OR because the modder just doesn't know how the texture should look
*THIS* was the future I was excited about when nvidia first showed off ray-traced classic games like Quake 2. It made the games look almost as modern as a remake, but without needing to go to the effort of a full remake. The fact that modders now have the tools to make this happen on almost ANY game is very exciting.
"It made the games look almost as modern as a remake, but without needing to go to the effort of a full remake" It literally used a HD texture pack and an updated version of the engine (Q2XP) to build from 😒 They did more after the initial release, but it's without question that other people set the ball rolling and handed them an easy win. Also Q2 3D geometry for the map, weapons and enemies is laughably low complexity compared to modern AAA game assets. The difference when using the same path tracing methods on modern higher complexity geometry is no small thing.
Yeah when you said "drenched in gloom" I thought "sure, this station is surely drenched in glue, as every surface looks slimy". LOL. Jokes aside, I am looking forward to this mod in its complete form. Been a huge Max Payne fan since 2001.
This is part of the problem with so much 'RTX' stuff. They go wild on trying to show off RT reflections so they made as many surfaces as glossy as possible which just checks me completely out of the immersion.
@@mnomadvfx Yep, artistic direction is still essential. Also this is one of the reasons I prefer Ray-Traced Global Illumination to RT-based glossy reflections (that is, in the scenarios where glossy reflections ruin the artistic integrity instead of enhance it).
Yup, it looks hideous to me as well I'm afraid. Also the stuff about the original not looking dark is something like gamma too high, contrast too low or the blacks / contrast of some LCD display sucking ass. The original game does *not* look bright.
Except 90% of the time it's hideous and the only people who like it are gamer kiddies who think anything different and modern is automatically cool, but wouldn't know artistic integrity if it came in a bag labelled "artistic integrity".
I want to see Battlefield 3 ran through RTX Remix. It already looks so damn good even 13 years later but after the upgrades to models/textures and lighting, it would look insane.
A caveat about Remix working on any game: it only supports games running Fixed function pipelines like older DX9.0 games. Any DX9.0c+ game using shaders won't work without workarounds and modifying its rendering system. About pixelated older game (especially SOTN shown in the vid), post-processing shaders can be used to add CRT or scanline shaders. It already exists in PS1 emulators and in Reshade.
Yeah wait till games have actual AI and able to communicate with you in a realistic way. Or each time you play a game it's a different outcome bc the AI adapts to each different game play
@@afos88 RPGs with not dumb/interesting NPCs. Tho we'll have to wait for something that can produce consistent results and not hog ressources, unlike current LLMs
I see a lot of potential in this. Also, assets having lighting baked onto them as textures isn't a problem since you can go ahead and completely replace said asset with a new one including geometry. The textures in this demo are almost all ai enhanced, but hand made textures and models can look much better. I myself am working on a remix mod. There are a few videos about it on my channel.
Loads of people complaining about shininess, You can tweak the roughness, Metallness and etc in remix menu and have things very reflective, Metallic or just very rough or subtle reflections
Which is honestly carrying a lot of the weight here. RTX is beautiful but it's still ultimately light bouncing around what are effectively flat surfaces. Real magic is still happening at the shader level.
The tool ENB does something similar (but with a smaller scope) for games like Skyrim and Fallout 4. Some shaders are replaced or added (metal shader, rain wetness, parallax occlusion mapping), screen space global illumination is added, grass collision added. It's fine-tuned for individual games. Nvidia Remix takes a more general approach, but that's only compatible with very old games (pre 2010 at the very least). The Remix modding tools include AI tools to generate modern PBR texture sets out of the simple JPGs that these old games usually used. They're not created in real time while playing though, but during the modding process. All the new assets are then put in a folder, so that the Remix runtime can load them instead of the original ones.
I believe the same tech of RTX that works over rendered frames could be used to make the pixel art games be modied into a way that gives the effect of a CRT. Since at the end of the day, the info is the same. Its the display post render that changed. Thats what some tech artist have been doing to give the old CRT feel, a post process that trys to emulate the CRT.
I remember watching the Morrowind demo when that came out. I've been wondering what happened to this. Hopefully a lot of modders pick this up and revamp all our old favorites!
Just reminds me of the 3DFX days when the first patches dropped on the first games you owned. Tomb Raider, Scorched Planet, Destruction Derby, Mechwarrior 2 etc
This highlights a very interesting set of problems old games will face in terms of ray/path tracing: 1) Some textures will have to be reworked to be totally diffuse instead of having baked effects. 2) Unmotivated light sources can look unnatural when rendered realistically. 3) Blob shadows and lightmaps would need to be removed, as well as "carved" lighting like we see on N64 games. 4) HD textures will need to maintain the game's original art direction. 5) Planar reflections like we see in say, Mario 64, would have to be completely nixxed so a ray-traced reflection can be used.
A great example was Half-life 2 remix. It really is a powerful tool for modders notably, outcome product still needs some tweak and optimization for models and texture ofc.
I would love too see AC4 blackflag or Cod WAW in rtx remix but for those games it may take a few more years probably depending on how heavy it is to run.
If you asked a few months ago they would have told you WAW was impossible, but some very talented folks that know a good deal about reverse engineering have been working on that recently with some very promising results. Black Flag is basically guaranteed not to happen unfortunately, the only games that have hope of working use DirectX 9 or older APIs.
Great video! Thanks for sharing. I would only say thought that “it require us to stretch our imagination” in a tone like it’s a bad thing feels weird to me. Maybe because I grew up with the originals super Mario, Sonic, etc as well as playing with Legos and whatnot I feel that pushing for one’s imagination is nothing bad at all. I love to see games with amazing graphic fidelity, but honestly most are actually quite boring after a bit. And sometimes that graphic fidelity even gets in the way. Watchdogs Legion is an example of this. Playing with Raytracing is beautiful. But given it’s London everything is wet and so there are reflections everywhere. It makes it so noisy visually sometimes that it gets a bit in the way. So I think graphical fidelity is incredible to see. But for games it is definitely not the end-all. I think it can actually make us lazy in the future regarding imagination.
I love that you seem to know what you're talking about here. You called out some concerns I had as they were forming in my mind so you obviously know what to look for without being overly critical. Great content.
What if developers, instead of making rereleases, would use RTX Remix to deliver free patches for their games. So touching up the lighting, materials and models to morernise them. Maybe work with the community too to alleviate workload.
I think this tech will be a much bigger deal for the modding scene of games than trying to "remake" entire games. I am sure some crazy groups will go re do entire old games but just the ability to enhance the textures is already enough to transform many old games especially in the characters which are the things hardest to overlook being dated
To be fair, Max Payne 1 had dated graphics back then as well. It ran on my old standard Dell. Still one of my all time faves, along with the Sequel. 3rd one was good, but 2 is the best
Horrible take. Max Payne's visuals were revolutionary back in 2001. Yes its dated now in 2024, but at the time of release in 2001, it blew gamers away.
@@thechosenone2123 You know what, I think you might be right. I dont remember it looking that great outside of slow mo, but I do remember it running on my crap pc. I played it on release and still have the mousepad that came with it. I'm going to delete my previous comment
personally I'm hoping for some 3D era JRPG's to get remix'd, not because they need them as they stand on their own without god tier graphics anyway, but because it could add so much to the atmosphere and storytelling of an already amazingly detailed world.
I think putting AI to work on these remixes is the way to go. AI to increase texture quality based on stable diffusion, AI to increase model level of detail and realism based on 3D data of real world objects, AI to figure out proper light placement reproducing or enhancing the artistic vision of the original game, etc. The modder would just tweak the AI's results, not do most of the grunt work.
Would be cool to see RTX in games like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, or Nevewrinter Nights 2, or Jade Empire. But more importantly... I'd need to afford a RTX card first, I'm still on an old 1080Ti FE.
As we're beginning to reach a plateau in hardware performance, it'll be interesting where these types of software advancements will take us. I'm sure that Remix, DLSS, and other similar frame generation techniques will be huge for the future of real time graphics. Truly some exciting stuff.
After something like the 4090 coming out, I wouldn't say we're entering a plateu at all. It's a disgustingly massive leap in performance over the 3090, and at a similar if not slightly smaller power cost. It is however much bigger.
@@trevorveillette8415 Yeah, looked it up and definitely jumped the gun saying GPU performance is plateauing since I'm more familiar with the relative plateau of CPU performance. Still super neat seeing AI-driven software pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with our current hardware.
I keep wondering if it'll be possible to use with emulators. DX8-DX10 I believe is what this works on, right? If that's the case, then some older versions of Dolphin (or Ishiiruka, maybe) have the potential of using this tech, if it actually works with them. It would be really neat to see old Gamecube and Wii games getting this treatment. Meanwhile, a madman by the name of Dario has been making a raytracing plugin for N64 that, once stable, should allow you to add dynamic lighting to any N64 game. Pretty cool stuff in our future.
The only emulator that's worked so far (with very limited success) was CXBX-Reloaded. This is because that particular emulator was basically just a wrapper from Xbox Original's DirectX to Windows DirectX which are very similar. There's an ancient fork of PCSX2 from before the DX9 renderer got shelved, but nobody's around anymore to continue the experiment and there's some problems with its use of shaders.
This is what will make ppl want to buy Nvidia cards. Not Hard to Run Ray Tracing in newer games but going back and recreating the old classics in a new, fresh way. I would love if RTX REMIX Worked on Emulators. Can you imagine Remix in some of our favorite games from back in the day. C'man please.
This looks really cool but I imagine games are going to be overly dark or overly bright in comparison to the original, which is harder to justify because it means now half the level might be pitch black when if the original creators had access to this tech they might have wanted to keep it brighter. We might end up forgetting how these games originally were intended to look, in the same way we've forgotten how retrogames are supposed to look (with a CRT).
Yeah, assets for those games were not thought with RT in mind so this will most often than not ruin the original art direction. It's cool to have more options, but it's not something that i would personally use.
There are some games I used to play as a kid that I tried replaying and just couldn't bear how it looks, even knowing how good the game really is. Like the original Max Payner and The witcher.
Dark Messiah would look awesome Also would love to see Alone in the dark 1. I mean a faithful 1:1 remake with the same camera mechanism not like the latest game
3:52 Despite the fact this project is a WIP made by someone 👏 , i must say the original looks a lot more "stable" (no flickering stuff) and realistic than the remix here. My two cents: Never use point light too close to a shinny surface when you're trying to fake an area light (e.g. ceiling lights). The end result will always look super fake.
Dude Imagine Castlevania Lords of Shadows Ultimate Edition with 4K DSR and this That game aged so well because of the updates and the art direction remaining good, and then DSR could remove its aliasing which was the main visual issue, then this to make the textures and lighting up to date with modern tech
I can't help but always think of the GTA trilogy remaster when I see these RTX mods which I'm not really a fan of. However, I can't wait to see how this sort of tech evolves over the years.
Look at the footage of RTX Max Payne in greyscale and tell me it isn't amazing. The enhanced lighting and normal/bump maps really give it a '40s to '50s noir flair, and it suits the game perfectly.
I’d love to see this done for Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2, and LEGO Island.
OLD games with Ray-tracing? *Left 4 Dead 2, Resident Evil* (original) series, including *RE5!* Star wars: *X-wing series - TIE-Fighter, X-wing: Alliance,* Tom clancy's *Splinter Cell* series, *GTA5, A Plague Tale, Tomb Raider* series, *Battlefield Bad Company 2, CRYSIS* series!! *Deus Ex* series, Series from: *Borderlands, Call of Duty, Eurotruck Simulator 2, Formula 1 (Codemasters racing games), Microsoft Flight Simulator, Fallout, Insurgency Sandstorm, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Mafia, Project Cars 2, Assetto Corsa, star trek: Bridge crew, Half-Life, Star wars: Battlefront, Swat 4, TitanFall 2, Subnautica, Video Horro Society, Evil Dead: The Game,*
I wish they would remake Syphon Filter. That game was SIIIICK! Plus it's so old now and they never made anything past PS2, I would love to see what they could do now.
Nvidia was right when they said that this technology was "the future of gaming", we only had to wait 4000 series hardware and software acceleration... (sad 2000 series owner noise)
They were always right. Ray tracing has been the goal for lighting since the 80s but it couldn't really be done in real time. Rasterization was always trying to fake it
@@crestofhonor2349To be fair, I don’t think that many people in general thought it was ever going to be a thing that was possible in real time. Especially before all the dlss stuff and such.
The most exciting thing, for me, with regards to things like RTX Remix is the possibility to completely rip out all the old assets and substitute fan-made ones whole-sale, effectively allowing fan made remakes without needing access to the source code, or undergoing the long arduous reverse engineering process.
The Zelda OoT remake is not using this NVIDIA tool. CryZEN built it in in Unreal Engine 4 and imported it into Unreal Engine 5. They did a ton of work on it.
RTX in Max Payne doesn’t hold up to the snappy and accurate Radiosity pass (phones run it). The “gloom” look is RTX’s limitations, the levels were designed bright by the designers for the old audience. Only thing Max Payne really needs are traced dynamic lights and reflections. The new textures would have to be PBR ones since originals were just photos with static everything. Lots of work actually and easy to change the feel of the whole thing. But really good to see people trying.
Would love to see this in the splinter cell games!
This is genuinely something I cannot understand about Ubisoft, they have one of the most perfect games out there to utilise ray-tracing and showcase it beautifully and year after year they let it rot, Michael Ironside isn't getting any God damn younger.
I miss splinter cell 😢
Chaos Theory's graphics on the original Xbox looked very next gen back in the day with the clever lighting. I would love to see a RTX remix on that.
I like to see it with FEAR, Thief 1 & 2 games as well. Heck, pretty much any game that primarily focused heavily on lighting and shadows back in the day. Take a look at Doom 3 Raytracing.
It might break the art design the designer intended for them to have
I think they would have to remake the whole game to make it work. Baked shadows in SC games are not only for visuals, they determine the gameplay features as well as they are carefully planned in the level design. Transition to path tracing would bring fundamental changes for the game.
But a stealth game like Splinter Cell or Thief with full path traced lighting would be super interesting to see.
i'm also excited for their Neural Texture Compression tech that helps reduce the size and memory cost of textures and materials while keeping the quality almost identical.
true... optimization is as important as pushing graphics, looking at you modern warfare games and their 170+ gig installs
I don't remember where I read this but I remember reading that NTC will require more processing power so it'll slow down the gpu
not really, it uses the tensor cores on the GPU, the drawbacks are slightly increased latency@@TheNewSkai
Goodbye 100gb+ downloads
@Archaoen0 Huh? NTC isn't a post production thing?
The important thing here is that modders have to partner with artists for these mods to really work out. I love to see Max Payne with upgraded graphics, but the "all wet effect", that is just a very high specularity to make the materials pop, is a mistake most do when trying to go to RTX territory.
Specularity yes, but specifically ultra high gloss or ultra low roughness depending on which version of PBR you subscribe too.
As you say the all wet/all mirror effect is very kitsch and distracting.
Better shadows and GI are far more important IMHO.
They have to do that because RTX isn't visible if every surface isn't coated with thick layers of wax
This stuff looks insane! It makes Max Payne look like how I remembered it when I first played it back in the 2000s.
I really can't wait to see how far this game-enhancing technology will go in making old games look cool again.
This kind of reminds me of the old 3Dfx era, where that generation of graphics card suddenly provided things like transparency and texture filtering which totally changed the feel that games had. When games started to support it, you for some time had two versions, the software one and the hardware accelerated one.
I remember nfs 3 hot pursuit, it looked crazy with the voodoo card!!
IMO Painkiller game back from 2004 could really use an RTX Remix touch. This game has a unique narrative, where every single level is completely different. From Cemetery in the nowhere of Poland to Amusement park, from Cathedral to Asylum, from Opera to Babylon to the literal Hell. From dark, almost horror-like experiences to colorful and bright. It has so much potential in visual enhancements!
Damn it's like I went back to 2005 when every texture looks wet.... I know eventually this will be impressive but right now it's still.... ehhh...
It’s the same way every “Realistic RTX Super Ray Tracing” graphics mod for GTAV includes hella reflective cars for absolutely no reason.
Reflectance looks cool and fancy, but eventually folks who crave realistic visuals will settle into a more diffuse aesthetic. The real world is dirty and dusty
@@fanovaohsmutsThere's a reason for that; most people find it very attractive.
Why else do you think almost all makes of sports cars have reflective surfaces? That's not a coincidence, dude.
Also not a fan of nvidia tools since they pretty much try to stifle competition any way they can - including this one
@@MiDnYTe25 How does this stifle competition? If you want better stuff then step up and compete and do it better
I literally downloaded and started playing Max Payne for the first time the other day. This is amazing timing
the max payne series is so sick
There's a lot of classic games that maybe were not massive hits that they'd get a remaster, but I enjoyed them enough to get the RTX treatment. Tron 2.0, Freelancer, FEAR, Prey (2006), Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead 1&2, Prototype, Bioshock Infinite, etc. It's always fun to go back to the older games when they get a fresh coat of paint.
A lot of these games are too modern for rtx remix to work properly, the best games for rtx remix are early 2000s games
I can't recall where, maybe in a 2klicksphilip video about HL2 Remix, but I saw need for speed underground 2 named, which seems interesting because you can't seem to buy that game any where on pc.
Most of the games you listed are incompatible with Remix at this point as Remix relies on games using a fixed function rendering pipeline.
Did my guy actually just suggest that L4D wasn't a massive hit? 💀
Bioshock infinite too? I mean I know the Bioshock community cried because it wasn't underwater, but the game still did really well, and hardly flew under the radar
dude, Freelancer Badlands must look absolutely insane raytraced!
Max Payne 1 & 2 will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart. The gameplay, the monologues, THE SCORE 🤩🤩
Everything just looks shiny now. The games were art directed to fit the tech at the time. For the most part they would need to be redone by hand to capture the original intention
The only reasons textures are like that when showing off ray tracing are either because it's easier to show reflections than everything else RTX does OR because the modder just doesn't know how the texture should look
Would be good to see it in MGS2 and 3, even 1 or 4. Makes me want to look into doing it myself.
*THIS* was the future I was excited about when nvidia first showed off ray-traced classic games like Quake 2. It made the games look almost as modern as a remake, but without needing to go to the effort of a full remake. The fact that modders now have the tools to make this happen on almost ANY game is very exciting.
"It made the games look almost as modern as a remake, but without needing to go to the effort of a full remake"
It literally used a HD texture pack and an updated version of the engine (Q2XP) to build from 😒
They did more after the initial release, but it's without question that other people set the ball rolling and handed them an easy win.
Also Q2 3D geometry for the map, weapons and enemies is laughably low complexity compared to modern AAA game assets.
The difference when using the same path tracing methods on modern higher complexity geometry is no small thing.
Yeah when you said "drenched in gloom" I thought "sure, this station is surely drenched in glue, as every surface looks slimy". LOL. Jokes aside, I am looking forward to this mod in its complete form. Been a huge Max Payne fan since 2001.
This is part of the problem with so much 'RTX' stuff.
They go wild on trying to show off RT reflections so they made as many surfaces as glossy as possible which just checks me completely out of the immersion.
@@mnomadvfx Yep, artistic direction is still essential. Also this is one of the reasons I prefer Ray-Traced Global Illumination to RT-based glossy reflections (that is, in the scenarios where glossy reflections ruin the artistic integrity instead of enhance it).
Yup, it looks hideous to me as well I'm afraid. Also the stuff about the original not looking dark is something like gamma too high, contrast too low or the blacks / contrast of some LCD display sucking ass. The original game does *not* look bright.
RTX OFF : How it looks like
RTX ON : How you remember it
Except 90% of the time it's hideous and the only people who like it are gamer kiddies who think anything different and modern is automatically cool, but wouldn't know artistic integrity if it came in a bag labelled "artistic integrity".
@@Squantinteresting and impressive new technology: [enters infancy]
you: ah yes, the perfect chance to attempt to reinforce my fragile ego
@@Squant Hello grampa gamer its time to put the controller down and play bingo gramps
Imagine this with bad company 2. Game was fucking awesome
I want to see Battlefield 3 ran through RTX Remix. It already looks so damn good even 13 years later but after the upgrades to models/textures and lighting, it would look insane.
please modders make it happen
A caveat about Remix working on any game: it only supports games running Fixed function pipelines like older DX9.0 games. Any DX9.0c+ game using shaders won't work without workarounds and modifying its rendering system.
About pixelated older game (especially SOTN shown in the vid), post-processing shaders can be used to add CRT or scanline shaders. It already exists in PS1 emulators and in Reshade.
what i love about Nvidia is they always bring new tech to the table.
I can’t believe technology is already at this point. Crazy. Nvidia is always at the cutting edge on cool techniques that change everything
This was way underwhelming as "cutting edge" goes even TWO YEARS AGO when they started hyping RTX Remix first
Yeah wait till games have actual AI and able to communicate with you in a realistic way. Or each time you play a game it's a different outcome bc the AI adapts to each different game play
@@TommyLee-hu5dy That kind of AI currently only exists in the fever dreams of the marketing bros in AI startups
@@TommyLee-hu5dy why would anybody even want that? It will not work or not make any sense for like 99% of games except some tech demos
@@afos88 RPGs with not dumb/interesting NPCs. Tho we'll have to wait for something that can produce consistent results and not hog ressources, unlike current LLMs
On our way to raytracing and VRing every classic title haha. Sounds fun!
Star Wars Episode 1 racer with the REmix would be pure bliss
I see a lot of potential in this. Also, assets having lighting baked onto them as textures isn't a problem since you can go ahead and completely replace said asset with a new one including geometry. The textures in this demo are almost all ai enhanced, but hand made textures and models can look much better. I myself am working on a remix mod. There are a few videos about it on my channel.
Loads of people complaining about shininess, You can tweak the roughness, Metallness and etc in remix menu and have things very reflective, Metallic or just very rough or subtle reflections
They're not just adding ray tracing, they're also adding roughness and normal maps to the textures.
Which is honestly carrying a lot of the weight here. RTX is beautiful but it's still ultimately light bouncing around what are effectively flat surfaces. Real magic is still happening at the shader level.
Yup, it adds PBR.
In all Splinter Cell, F.E.A.R. videogames, Thief 1 and Thief 2 :D
that crt/lcd example was really interesting. kind of explains why i remember games looking better than they are now going back and replaying them.
The whole approach of substituting the textures and lighting in real time is mind blowing. It's hard to believe that's something that's even possible.
The tool ENB does something similar (but with a smaller scope) for games like Skyrim and Fallout 4. Some shaders are replaced or added (metal shader, rain wetness, parallax occlusion mapping), screen space global illumination is added, grass collision added. It's fine-tuned for individual games.
Nvidia Remix takes a more general approach, but that's only compatible with very old games (pre 2010 at the very least). The Remix modding tools include AI tools to generate modern PBR texture sets out of the simple JPGs that these old games usually used. They're not created in real time while playing though, but during the modding process. All the new assets are then put in a folder, so that the Remix runtime can load them instead of the original ones.
I cannot wait for a RTX remix of F.E.A.R., infused with tender loving care! What an exciting time to be an owner of a RTX gpu!
I believe the same tech of RTX that works over rendered frames could be used to make the pixel art games be modied into a way that gives the effect of a CRT. Since at the end of the day, the info is the same. Its the display post render that changed. Thats what some tech artist have been doing to give the old CRT feel, a post process that trys to emulate the CRT.
I remember watching the Morrowind demo when that came out. I've been wondering what happened to this. Hopefully a lot of modders pick this up and revamp all our old favorites!
Given what's going on with free tools being used for AI song covers maybe we'll also see a much larger variety of voices as well.
Just reminds me of the 3DFX days when the first patches dropped on the first games you owned. Tomb Raider, Scorched Planet, Destruction Derby, Mechwarrior 2 etc
This highlights a very interesting set of problems old games will face in terms of ray/path tracing:
1) Some textures will have to be reworked to be totally diffuse instead of having baked effects.
2) Unmotivated light sources can look unnatural when rendered realistically.
3) Blob shadows and lightmaps would need to be removed, as well as "carved" lighting like we see on N64 games.
4) HD textures will need to maintain the game's original art direction.
5) Planar reflections like we see in say, Mario 64, would have to be completely nixxed so a ray-traced reflection can be used.
Oh my god I need to use this on Deus Ex. JC Denton with RTX baby!
Max Payne looks insanely good with it. I'll definitely play through it again with this. Max Payne 2 as well.
Halo 3 with ray tracing would look amazing
Halo 3 honestly still stands on its art direction in my opinion. I'd love to see what magic RTX could bring to Halo 1/2 though.
A great example was Half-life 2 remix. It really is a powerful tool for modders notably, outcome product still needs some tweak and optimization for models and texture ofc.
Wow. Playing Max Payne with those kind of graphics would be a great experience. Imagine playing that with the FPS mod in VR. That'd be a trip.
The Thief games would be a trip with RTX
They would be epic
I would love too see AC4 blackflag or Cod WAW in rtx remix but for those games it may take a few more years probably depending on how heavy it is to run.
If you asked a few months ago they would have told you WAW was impossible, but some very talented folks that know a good deal about reverse engineering have been working on that recently with some very promising results. Black Flag is basically guaranteed not to happen unfortunately, the only games that have hope of working use DirectX 9 or older APIs.
Hoping this makes companies actually put effort into remasters
Great video! Thanks for sharing. I would only say thought that “it require us to stretch our imagination” in a tone like it’s a bad thing feels weird to me.
Maybe because I grew up with the originals super Mario, Sonic, etc as well as playing with Legos and whatnot I feel that pushing for one’s imagination is nothing bad at all.
I love to see games with amazing graphic fidelity, but honestly most are actually quite boring after a bit. And sometimes that graphic fidelity even gets in the way.
Watchdogs Legion is an example of this. Playing with Raytracing is beautiful. But given it’s London everything is wet and so there are reflections everywhere. It makes it so noisy visually sometimes that it gets a bit in the way.
So I think graphical fidelity is incredible to see. But for games it is definitely not the end-all. I think it can actually make us lazy in the future regarding imagination.
I love that you seem to know what you're talking about here. You called out some concerns I had as they were forming in my mind so you obviously know what to look for without being overly critical. Great content.
RTX on is how my eyes saw the game as a kid.
What if developers, instead of making rereleases, would use RTX Remix to deliver free patches for their games. So touching up the lighting, materials and models to morernise them. Maybe work with the community too to alleviate workload.
I think this tech will be a much bigger deal for the modding scene of games than trying to "remake" entire games. I am sure some crazy groups will go re do entire old games but just the ability to enhance the textures is already enough to transform many old games especially in the characters which are the things hardest to overlook being dated
To be fair, Max Payne 1 had dated graphics back then as well. It ran on my old standard Dell. Still one of my all time faves, along with the Sequel.
3rd one was good, but 2 is the best
Horrible take. Max Payne's visuals were revolutionary back in 2001. Yes its dated now in 2024, but at the time of release in 2001, it blew gamers away.
@@thechosenone2123 You know what, I think you might be right. I dont remember it looking that great outside of slow mo, but I do remember it running on my crap pc. I played it on release and still have the mousepad that came with it. I'm going to delete my previous comment
New Max Payne mod? Now ray trace the matrix mod and I can relive my childhood.
personally I'm hoping for some 3D era JRPG's to get remix'd, not because they need them as they stand on their own without god tier graphics anyway, but because it could add so much to the atmosphere and storytelling of an already amazingly detailed world.
I think this is great because it opens things up for communities to more easily “remaster” old school games. It at least makes your nostalgia 4k.
I think putting AI to work on these remixes is the way to go. AI to increase texture quality based on stable diffusion, AI to increase model level of detail and realism based on 3D data of real world objects, AI to figure out proper light placement reproducing or enhancing the artistic vision of the original game, etc. The modder would just tweak the AI's results, not do most of the grunt work.
That sounds like it could be an unoptimized mess
thoughts exactly
So why exactly should I give any credit for the modder, if most of his mod is made by an AI? It's not his work. It's the work of an algorithm.
AI is a tool. Not someone you tell to do everything for you
When I buy a 1500€ gpu to enjoy AI hallucinations and graphcal artifacts from DLSS/FSR
Imagine FEAR with RTX
now i want this dammit
+1
oh yeaaa baby that would be amazin
Love my old ps4 disc of Mass Effects with the free 4k/60fps patch for the ps5.
Would be cool to see RTX in games like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, or Nevewrinter Nights 2, or Jade Empire.
But more importantly... I'd need to afford a RTX card first, I'm still on an old 1080Ti FE.
As we're beginning to reach a plateau in hardware performance, it'll be interesting where these types of software advancements will take us. I'm sure that Remix, DLSS, and other similar frame generation techniques will be huge for the future of real time graphics. Truly some exciting stuff.
The future will probably be CPUs playing catch up with GPUs, and better optimization so pc games use everything your pc has to offer
After something like the 4090 coming out, I wouldn't say we're entering a plateu at all. It's a disgustingly massive leap in performance over the 3090, and at a similar if not slightly smaller power cost. It is however much bigger.
I don't know. There is a lot of stuff we still need ironing out when it comes to visuals
@@trevorveillette8415 Yeah, looked it up and definitely jumped the gun saying GPU performance is plateauing since I'm more familiar with the relative plateau of CPU performance. Still super neat seeing AI-driven software pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with our current hardware.
Let's just appreciate that he went beyond bloodline chapter in Max Payne
This is going to make Super Auto Pets look insane.
I can't wait for the full release of rtx remix, I'll use it on cry of fear
And now the tech is open source and free for everyone!
I wonder how the original Sonic games (on the Genesis) will look like with this tech
Man they literally fulfilled that rtx on and rtx off meme
I keep wondering if it'll be possible to use with emulators. DX8-DX10 I believe is what this works on, right? If that's the case, then some older versions of Dolphin (or Ishiiruka, maybe) have the potential of using this tech, if it actually works with them. It would be really neat to see old Gamecube and Wii games getting this treatment.
Meanwhile, a madman by the name of Dario has been making a raytracing plugin for N64 that, once stable, should allow you to add dynamic lighting to any N64 game. Pretty cool stuff in our future.
DX 8 and 9. Not every DX9 game tho, it has to use fixed function pipeline
The only emulator that's worked so far (with very limited success) was CXBX-Reloaded. This is because that particular emulator was basically just a wrapper from Xbox Original's DirectX to Windows DirectX which are very similar. There's an ancient fork of PCSX2 from before the DX9 renderer got shelved, but nobody's around anymore to continue the experiment and there's some problems with its use of shaders.
This is what will make ppl want to buy Nvidia cards. Not Hard to Run Ray Tracing in newer games but going back and recreating the old classics in a new, fresh way. I would love if RTX REMIX Worked on Emulators. Can you imagine Remix in some of our favorite games from back in the day. C'man please.
This looks really cool but I imagine games are going to be overly dark or overly bright in comparison to the original, which is harder to justify because it means now half the level might be pitch black when if the original creators had access to this tech they might have wanted to keep it brighter. We might end up forgetting how these games originally were intended to look, in the same way we've forgotten how retrogames are supposed to look (with a CRT).
Yeah, assets for those games were not thought with RT in mind so this will most often than not ruin the original art direction. It's cool to have more options, but it's not something that i would personally use.
There are some games I used to play as a kid that I tried replaying and just couldn't bear how it looks, even knowing how good the game really is. Like the original Max Payner and The witcher.
I cant wait to have raytracing in Crysis!
Dark Messiah would look awesome
Also would love to see Alone in the dark 1.
I mean a faithful 1:1 remake with the same camera mechanism not like the latest game
3:52 Despite the fact this project is a WIP made by someone 👏 , i must say the original looks a lot more "stable" (no flickering stuff) and realistic than the remix here.
My two cents: Never use point light too close to a shinny surface when you're trying to fake an area light (e.g. ceiling lights). The end result will always look super fake.
Between this and the recent VR injector for anything made in recent Unreal Engines, gaming is getting _hyperreal._
For someone that craves RT as much as I do , this is big , like really big
Dude
Imagine Castlevania Lords of Shadows Ultimate Edition with 4K DSR and this
That game aged so well because of the updates and the art direction remaining good, and then DSR could remove its aliasing which was the main visual issue, then this to make the textures and lighting up to date with modern tech
I can't help but always think of the GTA trilogy remaster when I see these RTX mods which I'm not really a fan of. However, I can't wait to see how this sort of tech evolves over the years.
Yeah I understand that.
To rework an Art Style it just needs more than more polygons and generic bumpmaps
i wanna see the crash bandicoot 1 2 and 3 with RTX
GTA4 is on DX9... that's what I'm trying to do now with remix!!!! :)
RTX is a technology that can be used to make all the rooms in games wet and oily
i just cant wait for Medal of Honor Allied Assault and Airborne with RTX. Then i can die happy replaying my childhood favorites!
Look at the footage of RTX Max Payne in greyscale and tell me it isn't amazing. The enhanced lighting and normal/bump maps really give it a '40s to '50s noir flair, and it suits the game perfectly.
I’d love to see this done for Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2, and LEGO Island.
Can't wait to see a System Shock 2 upgrade with this tech
I agree with just about everything except for the pixelation being a bad look nowadays... i LIKE the hard pixel edges. :D
OLD games with Ray-tracing? *Left 4 Dead 2, Resident Evil* (original) series, including *RE5!* Star wars: *X-wing series - TIE-Fighter, X-wing: Alliance,* Tom clancy's *Splinter Cell* series, *GTA5, A Plague Tale, Tomb Raider* series, *Battlefield Bad Company 2, CRYSIS* series!! *Deus Ex* series, Series from: *Borderlands, Call of Duty, Eurotruck Simulator 2, Formula 1 (Codemasters racing games), Microsoft Flight Simulator, Fallout, Insurgency Sandstorm, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Mafia, Project Cars 2, Assetto Corsa, star trek: Bridge crew, Half-Life, Star wars: Battlefront, Swat 4, TitanFall 2, Subnautica, Video Horro Society, Evil Dead: The Game,*
Well, now I have to play Max Payne for the billionth time again.
i think it's "Make them look how we imagined them to look like when we were kids" xD haha
as close as we will get to a midnight club 3 remaster
Soul Reaver and Shenmue would make me weep tears of joy
Would love to see these applied to the PC ports of Silent Hill 2-4, and why not Homecoming as well.
This was they used in that Morrowind tech demo back then? Nice.
Morrowind mods are going to be nuts. I can get called an n'wah by a ray traced NPC!
Finally, the future is here. The day where we can see our old games preserved by giving them new life with ray tracing.
I wish they would remake Syphon Filter. That game was SIIIICK! Plus it's so old now and they never made anything past PS2, I would love to see what they could do now.
Nvidia was right when they said that this technology was "the future of gaming", we only had to wait 4000 series hardware and software acceleration... (sad 2000 series owner noise)
They were always right. Ray tracing has been the goal for lighting since the 80s but it couldn't really be done in real time. Rasterization was always trying to fake it
@@crestofhonor2349To be fair, I don’t think that many people in general thought it was ever going to be a thing that was possible in real time. Especially before all the dlss stuff and such.
@@abnorth2276 I didn't think it would come to much later as well before Nvidia came out with the 20 series
That looks amazing, I can't wait to see where this goes. Soon we might be able to tell ChatGPT to remaster a game. :p
Damn battlefront 2005 is going to be craaazyyy
Max Payne Oil Textures look like Matrix Path of Neo
hopefully one day we would see all the og games remastered with one click
The most exciting thing, for me, with regards to things like RTX Remix is the possibility to completely rip out all the old assets and substitute fan-made ones whole-sale, effectively allowing fan made remakes without needing access to the source code, or undergoing the long arduous reverse engineering process.
The Zelda OoT remake is not using this NVIDIA tool. CryZEN built it in in Unreal Engine 4 and imported it into Unreal Engine 5. They did a ton of work on it.
Shadow Man & Primal are older games that I’ve always thought should have an HD remake.
Can't wait to see the original KOTOR get this treatment as well!
RTX in Max Payne doesn’t hold up to the snappy and accurate Radiosity pass (phones run it). The “gloom” look is RTX’s limitations, the levels were designed bright by the designers for the old audience. Only thing Max Payne really needs are traced dynamic lights and reflections.
The new textures would have to be PBR ones since originals were just photos with static everything. Lots of work actually and easy to change the feel of the whole thing. But really good to see people trying.
Apparently this is the future of gaming. Cant make new games that are good anymore so make old games look good.