Home Gaming Nvidia’s releasing a version of Quake II with real-time ray tracing on June 6

Nvidia’s releasing a version of Quake II with real-time ray tracing on June 6

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Q2RTX

Nvidia’s real-time ray tracing is the future of video game graphics, and the chip company has an array of expensive graphics cards available to show it off. What they don’t really have, at the moment anyway, is much in the way of software to take advantage of the newfangled lighting and reflection technology. That’s changing though, and there are a bunch of games coming that support the RTX cards’ best feature. One of the most anticipated? Quake II.

That’s right, 1997’s Quake II is one of the most sought-after RTX-supported games, and it’s coming on June 6, with realistic real-time lighting, shadows and effects. Players will be able to download and play the first three levels for free, and if they have a copy of the original game, they’ll be able to point at the install folder and unlock the rest of it.

“It’s rare that a PC game has the impact and longevity of Quake II, and seeing it reimagined with ray tracing 20 years later is something special for me,” says id’s Tim Willits. “Equally special is the relationship with NVIDIA, whom we have worked with since the early days of 1st-person shooters. Seeing how NVIDIA integrated modern features into this classic game is really exciting.”

The RTX versions of Quake II uses path tracing to render just about everything, making the 1997 game have “one of the highest workloads of any ray-traced game released to date.” As such, Nvidia recommends at least an RTX 2060. Here’s what you can expect in the shiny new version of the old game:

  • Improved Global Illumination rendering, with three selectable quality presets, including two-bounce GI
  • Multiplayer support
  • Time of day options that radically change the appearance of some levels
  • New weapon models & textures
  • New dynamic environments (Stroggos surface, and space)
  • Better physically based atmospheric scattering, including settings for Stroggos sky
  • Real-time reflectivity of the player and weapon model on water and glass surfaces, and player model shadows, for owners of the complete game (the original Shareware release does not include player models)
  • Improved ray tracing denoising technology
  • All 3,000+ original game textures have been updated with a mix of Q2XP mod-pack textures and our own enhancements
  • Updated effects with new sprites and particle animations
  • Dynamic lighting for items such as blinking lights, signs, switches, elevators and moving objects
  • Caustics approximation to improve water lighting effects
  • High-quality screenshot mode that makes your screenshots look even better
  • Support for the old OpenGL renderer, enabling you to switch between RTX ON and RTX OFF
  • Cylindrical projection mode for wide-angle field of view on widescreen displays

Last Updated: May 28, 2019

17 Comments

  1. Admiral Chief

    May 28, 2019 at 09:02

    I need this in my life

    Reply

  2. Admiral Chief

    May 28, 2019 at 09:02

    How cool was the soundtrack eh?

    Reply

  3. Admiral Chief

    May 28, 2019 at 09:02

    YOSSSSSSSSSSS

    Pity I don’t have RTX card…

    Reply

  4. Viper_ZA

    May 28, 2019 at 09:32

    Not enough to convince me to splurge that kinda cash on a RTX, when the “next best thing” is sure to be around the corner…

    Reply

    • Pariah

      May 28, 2019 at 09:58

      Yeah when the tech becomes more mainstream, then I’ll buy. Until then it’s just a shiny brag-toy.

      Reply

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