There has been a surge in remastering old games in the past decade. For gamers wanting to relive playing their beloved games, buying them twice is worth it. This also meant attracting new players who never got to experience them, leading to dozens of classics coming back stronger. Of course, not all games received the treatment. What if you could — on your own or with the help of the community — mod any game into a remaster at no additional cost? RTX Remix might be what you’re looking for.
A portal to the future
Just a few years ago, Valve and NVIDIA released Portal with RTX. It may not have the polish of a full remaster, but this free expansion took Portal to new heights. Any person with a compatible graphics card could relive the adventure at Aperture Labs like never before. It wasn’t just any remaster; it was made with NVIDIA RTX Remix, the same tool that is now released publicly in beta. That means that the same quality of this expansion can potentially be in everyone’s hands and have every game potentially modernized.
According to NVIDIA, RTX Remix isn’t a “‘one button’ solution to remastering”. While the process might be straightforward, simply producing a mod without modifications will likely not result in a good experience. Many textures and lights might not look right if done this way. The platform supports a lot more than just ray tracing. It includes technologies such as DLSS, AI tools that turn textures into real materials, and NVIDIA Reflex (a tool meant to optimize latency). The platform can be used for full-on remakes with new meshes, lights, textures, object placement, and simple ray tracing integrations. A list of ongoing and available RTX Remix mods is available on ModDB.
RTX Remix is said to work best with DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games, which includes most games of the early 2000s. If there’s any game you’re nostalgic for, especially in that period, or have never experienced but would want to, there is a possibility a mod remastering it with the platform already exists. If it’s not, you might try to make it yourself, albeit it might take some time if you’re not experienced.
YouTube: RTX Remix – Remaster the Classics with RTX
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Photo credits: The feature image is owned by NVIDIA and has been provided for press usage.
