Nvidia just released the "official announce trailer" today for Quake II RTX, or Quake II with real-time ray tracing for those not in the know. There will be a free release to Windows and Linux users on June 6. Please note that this is not the same as the user created mod called "Q2VKPT."
But what exactly is Quake II RTX? It's the beloved classic FPS, Quake II, with modern, real-time ray tracing technology added to it. This delivers vastly improved lighting and effects work and, in many cases, completely alters the look of the game you thought you knew. Of course, this really only benefits those with GeForce RTX cards. You can still try it if you own the now real-time ray traced supported older cards, but don't expect to have a real good time. In fact, you might be lucky if it runs at all.
The free release will include the first three levels of the game. This will allow anybody to download and try out the new technologies without having to pay a dime. However, those who do own Quake II can play the entire campaign with RTX enabled. And if you don't own Quake II yet, you can pick it up from most places for around $5 or less.
Nvidia says that they will post the source code to GitHub for others to make use of. This will allow others to expand upon the work Nvidia put into this release with additional improvements or changes. This includes using ray traced Quake II in simple mods or even total conversions.
That all sounds great, but it gets better. Nvidia released a lengthy list of the improvements and benefits included in this release. You can find that below along with the minimum system requirements for Quake II RTX. The official announce trailer is also included here. If you want to see some nifty RTX ON vs RTX OFF comparison shots, be sure to hit up Nvidia's own article about this release.
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
- 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
