NVIDIA RTX Remix released, plus Half-Life 2 RTX demo arrives March 18 - looking way too bright

By Liam Dawe - 14 Mar 2025 at 11:14 am UTC
Last updated: 14 Mar 2025 at 11:15 am UTC

NVIDIA have released NVIDIA RTX Remix, their modding platform that allows developers to enhance games with full ray tracing. Additionally, Half-Life 2 RTX is getting a demo on March 18th.

After a year or so in Beta, the release of NVIDIA RTX Remix brings with it DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support. NVIDIA said that "Since that initial RTX Remix release, over 30,000 modders have experimented with hundreds of classic titles, and over 1 million gamers have played RTX Remix mods". It's open source and uses DXVK (part of Valve's Proton), under the MIT license, but only available for Windows via the NVIDIA app.

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Additionally, Half-Life 2 RTX that takes Valve's classic game and shoves ray tracing into it will get a demo on March 18th. They've shown off some more footage of it, and I'm thoroughly torn on it. I love the idea of enhancing games, and the newer textures look like a big improvement while keeping the style but overall this looks far too bright and shiny and just seems like it's lost part of what made it special. Still, as another sort-of tech demo of what the possibilities are with such upgrades, it's still quite interesting.

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Half-Life 2 RTX

Official links:

Steam

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.

Tags: Proton, Demo, Misc, New Release, NVIDIA, Open Source, Steam, Upcoming | Apps: Half-Life 2 RTX

4 Likes

About the author - Liam Dawe

I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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7 comments

Ehvis 6 hours ago

Supporter Plus

I may give it a quick try at some point, but I don't see myself finishing it. I don't think my ageing 2080 Ti is going to cope at 3440x1440. Besides, I have a severe distaste for temporal artefacts and that's all you're likely to get from this.
And the video clearly demonstrates why artistic lighting is better than physical lighting. The carefully created mood of certain areas is definitely not preserved.

5 Likes

lqe5433 6 hours ago

Is it possible that they will suppport Vulkan and AMD gpus?

0 Likes

Ehvis 6 hours ago

Supporter Plus

Is it possible that they will suppport Vulkan and AMD gpus?

That is what RTX remix does. It uses DXVK to translate DX9 into Vulkan and then injects it's own stuff in there. Anything that supports Vulkan raytracing should work.

0 Likes

CatKiller 5 hours ago

Supporter Plus

They've shown off some more footage of it, and I'm thoroughly torn on it. I love the idea of enhancing games, and the newer textures look like a big improvement while keeping the style but overall this looks far too bright and shiny and just seems like it's lost part of what made it special. Still, as another sort-of tech demo of what the possibilities are with such upgrades, it's still quite interesting.

Yeah, it's a sign of the conflict with their art direction. They've got to show that it's doing something rather than stopping at looks good, so it often dips into looks worse.

4 Likes

dpanter 5 hours ago

Mega Supporter

Ridiculous Novideo shenanigans, part ∞

0 Likes

The_Real_Bitterman 5 hours ago

I'd might be alone with this perception. But I never found that Half-Life 2 looked particularly good. Not even back then. More like they just made photos of real-world object, smashed it on some polygons in the hopes it will look realistic. While in turn it was very flat and boring to me.

I mean I played HL2, Lost Coast, Ep One and Ep Two and I enjoyed them. But not because they looked ... good or stylish or it had a special art direction.

Imho the RTX version looks way better. Even though I will never be bale to play it on my hardware. I find the original is often times way too dark and uncanny.

1 Likes

Tuxee 3 hours ago

Of course it looks "way better" - but not necessarily because of RT but because of the completely redone assets. The old version had some "leaves on a wall" texture, the RT version has complete 3D models of vines growing up a wall with 3D bricks...

5 Likes

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