Quake II RTX

[Executioner]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/ca ... ke-II-rtx/

RTX mod is getting a Steam release, it's a free upgrade if you own Quake II. You can play the first 3 levels for free.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah, going to try this out on my GTX1080 now that they support RTX on it. I know RTX is a huge performance hit on my card, but I figure Quake 2 should be playable.

[Err]

Don't you need to install Windows 10 1809 or later in order to enable RTX?

[FlyingPenguin]

Hmm. Didn't think so but I'll research thst tonight.

[FlyingPenguin]

Nope, looks like Win7 is the minimum. However, may not run well on my 1080. Seems they're using it to showcase RTX so it's actually more dependent on RTX cores than Metro Exodus.

I'll still try it.

Quake II RTX Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 7 64-bit or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i3-3220, or AMD equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, or higher
Storage: 2GB available space

[FlyingPenguin]

Meh. Not all that impressed. They didn't upgrade the textures much so it looks as muddy as ever, although the water effects are much nicer.

Shadows really never much played into this game so there's some contrivances to let you see the shadow effects. You can change the position of the sun in the sky manually with a gamepad stick, so you can see the shadows move, and they gave you a flare gun you can use to create multiple light sources inside in dark rooms.

I managed to get 25-30 FPS out of it by turning down the resolution to 1024x768 on my GTX 1080.

People on Steam are complaining that even with a GTX2080 are getting pretty lousy frame rates at 4K.

It's more of a tech demo.

[FlyingPenguin]

Oh, and the input lag makes the game almost unplayable.

BTW, I found this engine remake for Quake 2 which really does look nice:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/berserkerquake2

[Err]

The input lag is a showstopper. I think they are just asking today's video cards to do too much. In a couple of generations, it may be possible. I haven't even moved to 4K because I know my 1080 wouldn't be able to always drive it.

[Err]

Here is Vinny's VOD of him steaming it on a 2070.

He didn't hold back on his criticisms of the tech even though NVidia sent him the card to stream it. In another video, he talked about his discussion with an NVidia rep and the rep actually agreed with him. Mainly, the RTX tech doesn't warrant an upgrade right now.

[FlyingPenguin]

Oh it's cool that you can move the sun and change the shadows, but when is that really necessary in a game?

There's a new RTX only game coming out that expressly makes use of that by using shadows to allow an evil stalking you through a dungeon to hide in, but again it's a niche thing.

I see RTX as one little improvement on visuals that will be nice when every card does it without much overhead, but even the 2080 does it at the expense of a lot of performance, and it just isn't a must have thing for most games.

Remember when FSAA first came out and cost a LOT of performance? Yeah it looked nice, but you could still play Half-Life or Quake without it and it was perfectly fine, and most of us wanted the frames over a reduction in jaggies so after playing with it on a few times, most of us turned it off. Now that every card can do it without huffing and puffing, we all leave it on.