This is probably the best "ULTRA 4K GRAPHICS" thing that Quake II and other stuff has ever had, but I wish more modders/developers would make it work in tandem with the way a game looks.
Yes. Very much so.
Remember that the most important thing ( the source code ) for this tech will be liberated on GitHub as well. As soon as modders get hold of it, a proper use of these features will be done.
Expect a re-implementation of this with the original lighting values and proper textures/models on the following months.
I wonder to what point someone could attempt to implement this on GoldSrc ( more likely XASH 3D ).
On the other hand it makes it pretty easy to do a before and after pic of the rendering.
That's just mean.
Open source, simple and efficiently rendered geometry, it's the perfect game to show off ray-traced lighting without needing another AAA title to implement it.
The lighting is only fucked to hell if you're looking for a vanilla Quake 2, I think it's pretty impressive how the time of day can change the look so drastically.
https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx/quake-ii-rtx-rtx-on-screenshot-006-environment-setting-1.jpg
https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx/quake-ii-rtx-rtx-on-screenshot-006-environment-setting-2.jpg
https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx/quake-ii-rtx-rtx-on-screenshot-006-environment-setting-3.jpg
Also really great to see that they're publishing this on github, I wanna see what these effects look like in other games
It might work as a technology demonstrator, but it just does not look good. The high res textures and shaders just highlight how blocky the geometry is and end up looking wrong and out of place. Plus it's at odds with the game's artstyle.
It honestly depends how nostalgic for OG Quake 2 you are. This looks fine due to the lighting effects working so well and being so realistic. Quake always felt like a "dark for the sake of dark" type game which never worked for me, so i don't feel like losing out on the original atmosphere of that game by having this lighting technique be basically the driver of a new atmosphere is all that bad.
Nothing really hides that the geometry was blocky, I bet if you boot up the original right now it still looks blocky. That's because it largely was.
My problem is the models. The environment doesn't bother me on anything but lighting, because despite its blocky geometry, that works to Q2's strength thanks to being 90% alien techbase, so blocky environments make perfect sense. Trying to turn that bald Enforcer head into HD is a different story.
As I've said before, Quake 2 was a pretty important cornerstone of my childhood.
I absolutely love seeing people overhaul the engine and put all sorts of crazy effects, lighting, and HD textures into it. Breathes new life into the game with every take, making it a treat for me to play through while keeping that original gameplay I fell in love with.
And that's really what's important to me: the gameplay. I personally never found Quake 2's atmosphere or aesthetic personally appealing. I have no attachment to it. I never did. I put hundreds of hours after school into Quake 2 for the gameplay.
I hope people never stop overhauling the game, personally.
it's a shame no love for quake 2 was put into this. if they put the care into recreating the atmosphere even remotely instead of just making a tech demo this would be sick.
All these tech demos where ray tracing is just slapped in with no care to the atmosphere of the game and attention only shown to showing off the features of ray tracing do both the games and the technology a disservice.
For the most part if you're using ray tracing you need to have it in mind when creating levels, because you can't fake effects like you can with pre-baked lighting without it looking super obvious. This showcase is particularly bad because the light sources are set to absurd strengths, washing out most of the scene. Bad showcases like this make ray tracing look like a gimmick and I believe they only serve to harm the tech's adoption, while also creating an inferior version of an existing game artistically.
To be fair, Quake 2 in of itself was just a tech demo.
But yeah, I wish people would treat Quake 2 with a little more respect. Sure it's not the classic that Quake 1, Doom, or Wolfenstein 3D was, but it was a decent game.
your life must be really bland if you think brown corridors is 'soul'
When you get older you'll understand what an atmosphere and artstyle is
Personally I think it'd be nice if the game started with the same kind of orange dawn/dusk look the original game had for all of Stroggos, and then shifts the time of day with each part of the campaign you go through to show the passage of time between Units and the on-going nature of the mission. A little bit of a Half-Life idea, but instead RTX seems to have thrown out the original Stroggos look altogether for a constantly-shifting time of day system and blue skies for a planet that kinda lacks them. It also means that unless efforts are don to restore the skyboxes, all that cool artwork of distant bases and city architecture will be completely absent for the sake of the tech demo.
I was referring to both models and level geometry when I said blocky though. The problem isn't the geometry being blocky, it's that the HD textures accentuate the blockyness.
Again, the problem is not that the geometry is blocky. It's that the high-res textures accentuate how blocky it is. The original textures are pixelated and look like they belong on the blocky geometry but HD textures just look weird and out of place.
odd game to pick for this benchmark.
Q2 wasn't particularly memorable outside of maybe the soundtrack and railgun.
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