Half-Life 2 RTX is the latest release as part of Nvidia recently fully launching its RTX Remix tool. Developed through RTX Remix, Half-Life 2 RTX features the Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt levels. The team behind Half-Life 2 RTX has said that it plans on remastering the entirety of the game, with every texture, model and level getting updates.

“With a mission to remaster the entirety of Half-Life 2, we’re updating every texture, model, and level, adding extra geometric detail to buildings and surfaces to realistically interact with fully ray-traced lighting,” wrote Orbifold Studios in a post. “Each upgraded asset employs state of the art PBR-based workflows to make highly detailed meshes with realistic material properties, in place of the low resolution, low poly originals. And even particles and animations are being revitalized to bring Half-Life 2 to modern graphical standards.”

Along with ray traced lighting and higher resolution textures, Half-Life 2 RTX also features support for Nvidia’s DLSS 4. This includes support for upscaling, as well as Multi Frame Generation, which is able to multiply the frame rate by up to 10 times when playing Half Life 2 RTX at 4K. DLSS Super Resolution and DLSS Ray Reconstruction are also being used, along with the Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin, and RTX Volumetrics.

To play Half-Life 2 RTX, at minimum, you will need either an Intel i7-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with 8 GB of VRAM to run the game at 1080p and 30 FPS. This hardware will be able to run the game at the Low graphics preset with DLSS turned on.

To play at 1080p and 60 FPS, you will need either an Intel i7-10700 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 12 GB of VRAM. This will run the game at the High graphics preset with DLSS on.

To play at 4K and 144 FPS, you will need a top-of-the-line system running on either an Intel i7-12700K or an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 with 16 GB of VRAM. This runs the title at the Ultra preset with DLSS on.

Orbifold Studios has also provided optimal settings for players, depending on the resolutions and frame rates that they want to play at, while also taking their PC specs into account. These settings include Nvidia’s own feature set, including DLSS Ray Reconstruction models and Frame Generation mode depending on their GPU.

If Half-Life 2 RTX has made you curious about RTX Remix, you can try out the tool for free through Nvidia’s official website. RTX Remix was originally released as a beta back in 2023, and has allowed modders to bring modern visual effects to classic games like Painkiller and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

The showcased Half-Life 2 RTX demo will be available for free for anyone that already owns Half-Life 2 on Steam from March 18 onwards. The Half-Life 2 RTX demo will feature levels like Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt. A remix of the full Half-Life 2 through RTX Remix will be released at a later date.

Among the features showcased in Half-Life 2 RTX are DLSS 4 with multi frame generation, the Neural Radiance Cache to accelerate ray-traced lighting, RTX Skin that enhances Father Grigori, as well as enemies like headcrabs and zombies, and RTX Volumetrics for realistic for and smoke effects. Interestingly, Half-Life 2 RTX will also be one of the first implementations of subsurface scattering in a ray-traced game.

Nvidia RTX Remix was originally released as a beta back in 2023. Since then, according to the company, more than 30,000 modders have used the tool to bring ray tracing technology to several classic titles. The full release of RTX Remix features modern AI tools, including DLSS 4, RTX Neural Radiance Cache, and a the community-published AI model PBRFusion 3.

The built-in texture generative AI texture tools in RTX Remix can automatically analyse low-resolution textures from old games to then generate accurate texture materials, while also upscaling the textures to 4K resolutions. These new materials can then be used for realistic lighting effects through ray tracing.

PBRFusion 3 features two models: a PBR model and an upscaler based on diffusion. It acts as a plug-and-play package, allowing users to easily remaster classic titles by picking a number of textures through the RTX Remix Viewport and ComfyUI’s graphs and nodes.

RTX Remix can also be used through other software thanks to its REST API, allowing the use of tools like 3D modelling software Blender and modding tools like Hammer. The example provided reveals that modders can use the REST API integration to export game textures from RTX Remix to ComfyUI, and then seamlessly bring them back to the game after the textures have been enhanced in a big batch.

Since the beta release of Nvidia RTX Remix, several games have been modded to feature modern rendering technologies, high-resolution textures, and even ray-traced lighting. Several of these mods can be spotted at ModDB, which includes mods for games like classic shooter Painkiller, and even cult-classic RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

Nvidia had first unveiled RTX Remix all the way back in September 2022. At the time, the company used RPG The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind to showcase the tool’s powerful modding capabilities. In the showcase, Nvidia was able to easily add a new lighting system to the classic game, while also updating its textures to be of higher resolutions.

The beta release of RTX Remix was accompanied by the release of Portal RTX, which was also developed using the tool.