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The new lighting makes such a dramatic difference. Despite the same low polygon count, the levels seem much more lifelike. If all the game classics are re-relea

The new lighting makes such a dramatic difference. Despite the same low polygon count, the levels seem much more lifelike. If all the game classics are re-released with raytracing engines, I will be all over it. The next years are going to be good.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
navaati 8y ago
Now it's not like it's only an engine change, for this to work they added PBR layers (metalness, emission, normal, yada yada) to all textures here, and that's a big artistic work. That said… gimme gimme gimme Half Life 1, plssssssss :D !
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  HL1: Yes please, it would look so cool. > they added PBR layers and fluid simulation for explosions I'd rolling in joy for Max Payne and GTA San Andreas :)
- LeonM 8y ago
  HL1 already has a modern remake, check out 'Black Mesa' on Steam. It's really good.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    As someone passionate about hl1, I dont like Black mesa. Yes it looks nice, but gameplay wise it seems lacking to me. It feels very slow to move, bhopping has been nerfed to death. It feels more like a reboot than a remaster
    - crysin 8y ago
      From what I remember of Black Mesa, it felt more like Half-Life 2, control wise, than Half-Life. So for people who played Half-Life 2 first, Black Mesa probably feels more natural.
      - yellowapple 8y ago
        This is unsurprising, since they're both on the Source engine.
- sbarre 8y ago
  Maybe teams could use tools like AI Gigapixel (discussed on here yesterday) to upsample older textures? I agree with you that there is asset work to be done, but I bet there are tools out there that can simplify and automate this process quite a bit today.
  - codetrotter 8y ago
    I couldn’t find the tool you mentioned but I found a thread on another site about a GAN that can upscale images, and using that one to generate highres textures. https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-neural-networks-being-used-to-generate-hq-textures-for-older-games-you-can-do-it-yourself.88272/ https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-neural-networks-being-us...
    - sbarre 8y ago
      This was the article linked in the thread from yesterday.. It relates to upsampling TV show special effects but I think similar tools could be used: https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/03/remastering-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/03/remastering-star-trek...
    - sbarre 8y ago
      And here's the AI Gigapixel tool: https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel/ https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel/
pizza234 8y ago
I'm very skeptical. This is not just RTT; there's a big amount of rework. Likely, any old game would look significantly better with such development effort (in other words, with any good remastering). This could be considered a great market stunt - the graphical improvement is touted to be due to RTX (ray tracing), while it's actually due to many factors. On top of that, it misleads people into thinking that this type of improvement is typical of ray tracing, and that it comes at virtually no cost, while currently, ray tracing takes a big performance hit, and it's generally hard to notice. Q2VKPT is close to the concept "improved with ray tracing", and while certainly impressive, it doesn't yield the same "AMAZING!" effect.
- karrotwaltz 8y ago
  > it's actually due to many factors To add to this point, at 1:35 in the video they compare with / without volumetric ligthing except, well, volumetric lighting has been used in games for a while now. The "before" should show a non-RTX lighting instead of just nothing at all.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    I remember one of the big selling points of the Dreamcast in 1998 was volumetric lighting.
    - krige 8y ago
      Unreal, a Quake 2 contemporary, already had it and managed it on meager hardware like P200MMX
      - TomBombadildoze 8y ago
        If you consider a slide show "managing it", then sure.
        jl6 8y ago
        My P200MMX with a Voodoo 2 managed it just fine.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yogthos 8y ago
I would love to see a kickstarter or something to create high quality assets for Open Arena, and add raytracing. Personally, I find that Quake 3 gameplay is more fun than any modern shooter that I've played. It's fast paced, and really well streamlined. It's just pure adrenaline. Adding things like health regen, cover, alternate fire modes, and so on ultimately just distracts from the action in my opinion. We don't really have any more games like Quake nowadays.
- dkrikun 8y ago
  try reflex arena
partiallypro 8y ago
It's cool, but even back in the day people that competitively played Quake 2 & 3 would turn down every detail to be very low, sans the resolution. In part because it helped with lag, but it also made spotting enemies much easier. The lighting in this demo is very nice, but at least in the Quake world, no one would really use it because it's very distracting, specifically the lighting.
- PavlikPaja 8y ago
  They would as you could use the lighting to spot enemies you can't see directly, like you sometimes can in e.g. CSGO.
- dahart 8y ago
  I would use ray tracing to get a non-linear camera, specifically so I could have a wider field of view with less distortion than the linear camera & wide fov. Back on Q3, everyone would use 120 or 130 degree fov because that was the best compromise between seeing things to your side and everything getting squished into the center of your screen. If I could have played with 180, I would have. Your lighting point is reasonable in the sense that this demo was made to demonstrate the dramatic lighting without respect to gameplay. On the other hand games are already clearly going toward HDR and physical and dramatic lighting. If Quake had HDR lighting, it would look just as good but it would be less distracting because it would have been directed and designed to support the gameplay. This version also has dynamic adaptation which would have been awesome to have back in the day - some of the dark areas are too dark and it’s great to have the lighting automatically adjust so that at least I can see.
mikepurvis 8y ago
Hopefully it doesn't become one of those annoying tropes, though. Like Photoshop lens flares— every game has to have a bunch of arbitrarily reflective materials and light shafts just because the hardware now makes it possible.
- tachyonbeam 8y ago
  When bump mapping was starting to become a thing, every surface had to look ultra glossy for a while (example: http://mojolabs.nz/screenshot.php?id=1740 http://mojolabs.nz/screenshot.php?id=1740). Eventually the excitement subsided and people used this effect more tastefully. I think most people are just happy with more natural looking lighting though.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

navaati 8y ago

Now it's not like it's only an engine change, for this to work they added PBR layers (metalness, emission, normal, yada yada) to all textures here, and that's a big artistic work. That said… gimme gimme gimme Half Life 1, plssssssss :D !

kowdermeister 8y ago
HL1: Yes please, it would look so cool. > they added PBR layers and fluid simulation for explosions I'd rolling in joy for Max Payne and GTA San Andreas :)
LeonM 8y ago
HL1 already has a modern remake, check out 'Black Mesa' on Steam. It's really good.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  As someone passionate about hl1, I dont like Black mesa. Yes it looks nice, but gameplay wise it seems lacking to me. It feels very slow to move, bhopping has been nerfed to death. It feels more like a reboot than a remaster
  - crysin 8y ago
    From what I remember of Black Mesa, it felt more like Half-Life 2, control wise, than Half-Life. So for people who played Half-Life 2 first, Black Mesa probably feels more natural.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      This is unsurprising, since they're both on the Source engine.
sbarre 8y ago
Maybe teams could use tools like AI Gigapixel (discussed on here yesterday) to upsample older textures? I agree with you that there is asset work to be done, but I bet there are tools out there that can simplify and automate this process quite a bit today.
- codetrotter 8y ago
  I couldn’t find the tool you mentioned but I found a thread on another site about a GAN that can upscale images, and using that one to generate highres textures. https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-neural-networks-being-used-to-generate-hq-textures-for-older-games-you-can-do-it-yourself.88272/ https://www.resetera.com/threads/ai-neural-networks-being-us...
  - sbarre 8y ago
    This was the article linked in the thread from yesterday.. It relates to upsampling TV show special effects but I think similar tools could be used: https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/03/remastering-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/03/remastering-star-trek...
  - sbarre 8y ago
    And here's the AI Gigapixel tool: https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel/ https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel/

pizza234 8y ago

I'm very skeptical. This is not just RTT; there's a big amount of rework. Likely, any old game would look significantly better with such development effort (in other words, with any good remastering). This could be considered a great market stunt - the graphical improvement is touted to be due to RTX (ray tracing), while it's actually due to many factors. On top of that, it misleads people into thinking that this type of improvement is typical of ray tracing, and that it comes at virtually no cost, while currently, ray tracing takes a big performance hit, and it's generally hard to notice. Q2VKPT is close to the concept "improved with ray tracing", and while certainly impressive, it doesn't yield the same "AMAZING!" effect.

karrotwaltz 8y ago
> it's actually due to many factors To add to this point, at 1:35 in the video they compare with / without volumetric ligthing except, well, volumetric lighting has been used in games for a while now. The "before" should show a non-RTX lighting instead of just nothing at all.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  I remember one of the big selling points of the Dreamcast in 1998 was volumetric lighting.
  - krige 8y ago
    Unreal, a Quake 2 contemporary, already had it and managed it on meager hardware like P200MMX
    - TomBombadildoze 8y ago
      If you consider a slide show "managing it", then sure.
      - jl6 8y ago
        My P200MMX with a Voodoo 2 managed it just fine.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

yogthos 8y ago

I would love to see a kickstarter or something to create high quality assets for Open Arena, and add raytracing. Personally, I find that Quake 3 gameplay is more fun than any modern shooter that I've played. It's fast paced, and really well streamlined. It's just pure adrenaline. Adding things like health regen, cover, alternate fire modes, and so on ultimately just distracts from the action in my opinion. We don't really have any more games like Quake nowadays.

dkrikun 8y ago
try reflex arena

partiallypro 8y ago

It's cool, but even back in the day people that competitively played Quake 2 & 3 would turn down every detail to be very low, sans the resolution. In part because it helped with lag, but it also made spotting enemies much easier. The lighting in this demo is very nice, but at least in the Quake world, no one would really use it because it's very distracting, specifically the lighting.

PavlikPaja 8y ago
They would as you could use the lighting to spot enemies you can't see directly, like you sometimes can in e.g. CSGO.
dahart 8y ago
I would use ray tracing to get a non-linear camera, specifically so I could have a wider field of view with less distortion than the linear camera & wide fov. Back on Q3, everyone would use 120 or 130 degree fov because that was the best compromise between seeing things to your side and everything getting squished into the center of your screen. If I could have played with 180, I would have. Your lighting point is reasonable in the sense that this demo was made to demonstrate the dramatic lighting without respect to gameplay. On the other hand games are already clearly going toward HDR and physical and dramatic lighting. If Quake had HDR lighting, it would look just as good but it would be less distracting because it would have been directed and designed to support the gameplay. This version also has dynamic adaptation which would have been awesome to have back in the day - some of the dark areas are too dark and it’s great to have the lighting automatically adjust so that at least I can see.

mikepurvis 8y ago

Hopefully it doesn't become one of those annoying tropes, though. Like Photoshop lens flares— every game has to have a bunch of arbitrarily reflective materials and light shafts just because the hardware now makes it possible.

tachyonbeam 8y ago
When bump mapping was starting to become a thing, every surface had to look ultra glossy for a while (example: http://mojolabs.nz/screenshot.php?id=1740 http://mojolabs.nz/screenshot.php?id=1740). Eventually the excitement subsided and people used this effect more tastefully. I think most people are just happy with more natural looking lighting though.