Experience the first Half-Life as you never have before.


A user-created mod for the original Half-Life brings some new visual splendor to the 1998 classic. Those with capable Nvidia GPUs can try out a mod that adds path tracing into Half-Life. The mod is free and, if you like a little modern eye candy in your classics, can be downloaded right now.

The mod utilizes a variation of the Xash3D FWGS engine along with a custom path traced renderer. So while this is technically path traced Half-Life it's just easier to consider it ray traced as ray tracing is the predecessor to path tracing. Path tracing is just a bit more complex and the terminology isn't exactly as appealing to gamers as seeing the words "ray tracing."

This mod adds all of the familiar ray traced eye candy that you'd expect. There are real-time ray traced shadows, ray traced global illumination, ray traced reflections, water caustics, and so on. This mod won't upgrade the textures or anything, but it still looks real good.

Check it out in action below. By the way, the mod doesn't specify that this is for Nvidia cards only, but it was not tested on AMD hardware, so your milage may vary. Also, there is an optional DLSS install you can add if you need it for help with the framerate.