The widespread use of ray tracing is a small aesthetic and technical revolution in the world of video games. A small revolution that can also affect older games.
When, in September 2022, NVIDIA launched its new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, it also put forward various projects to push ray tracing/path tracing technologies a little further. The RTX Remix platform was quickly unveiled. Admittedly, at the time, we were keen to find out more about the new GeForce and see how they would perform on games like Cyberpunk 2077. What's more, the RTX Remix platform was not yet ready, merely presented by NVIDIA.
NVIDIA
Today, almost eighteen months later, NVIDIA has more arguments to put forward. Indeed, the RTX Remix platform is now available in open beta, and should enable all interested developers to get in on the action. Let's take this opportunity to take stock. As NVIDIA itself explains, the RTX Remix project " allows modders to easily save game assets, automatically improve material rendering with powerful AI tools and quickly create stunning RTX remasters with advanced support for full ray tracing and DLSS 3 ". It's a multi-tool platform to help modding communities worldwide. Modders are enthusiasts who take one or more games and modify many aspects of them. NVIDIA focuses on the technical side.
At the heart of it all is the Remix application, " a central interface that makes it easy to create RTX modifications " on any game: " import custom content very easily, optimize resources, illuminate scenes thanks to path tracing and view live updates thanks to Remix's display interface " are just some of the possibilities offered by the application. Drawing on generative artificial intelligence, NVIDIA also intends to considerably improve the textures applied to older DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 3D games, as well as more recent ones: " the generative AI tools for texturing integrated into RTX Remix make it possible to analyze the low-resolution textures of a large number of cult games, to generate materials with high physical precision for processing normal maps and roughness maps, and also to set resolutions up to 4 times higher ".
With what NVIDIA calls a detailed getting started guide, the company aims to simplify the work of developers interested in RTX Remix. NVIDIA is also releasing a few examples to whet the appetite, and points out that the Orbifold Studios team is currently working on Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, as if to show that major projects are already on the way.
