PC Quake II RTX now available on Steam

[dualhunter]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/

 

Demo is free (3 levels) but you have to pay for the rest of the game unless you already own it on Steam.

 

You can also get the demo from nVidia:

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/campaigns/quake-II-rtx/

 

I don't know if there's any way to get it to work with other full versions (maybe merge installs of the nVidia demo with a non-Steam install). 

[Zaku3]

Does this work with AMD?

[Keyser_Soze]

12 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

Does this work with AMD?

 

[dualhunter]

I briefly tried it, about 35fps on my 2070 (leave the resolution setting on "desktop" or prepare to click through a ton of resolution options, I'm using 1440p) but it was choppy even though the framerate was constant.

 

It looks like you should be able to use the Steam version of Quake II RTX with any version of Quake II. You install Quake II RTX and then when you attempt to run it, another installer will pop up asking if you want to install the demo or full game. If you select full game you'll have to point it to the regular Quake II game folder. You can run regular Quake II or the RTX version but the regular version doesn't have any of the non-RTX enhancements like mouse cursor in menus and resolutions above 1600x1200. You don't have to run the RTX version using RTX, you can launch the RTX version and switch it to OpenGL in the video settings and it'll still look nicer than the regular version of the game. I haven't tried but you could probably uninstall the regular Quake II after you use it to setup the RTX version since I think it just copies the necessary files from the regular version to the RTX version.

 

Tried it some more. I tried 1080p (I set my desktop resolution to that since it is much easier to select it from a drop down rather than clicking through every resolution and refresh rate in game) and got around 70fps and more importantly it wasn't choppy. Doesn't look as good though (mainly referring to the scaling rather than the lower resolution). A 4K display would probably scale to 1080p better. By default, the sky in singleplayer changes based on the current time (doesn't check your latitude so it's currently darker in game than it is outside). The audio sometimes gets messed up.

 

I have confirmed that you can uninstall the regular Quake II once you've used it to activate the whole game in Quake II RTX.

[Spork3245]

Getting 60-70fps at 1440p, 4k I seem to get in the 30s

[Keyser_Soze]

Yeah 4k on this is a no go.

But it certainly looks nice!

 

 

 

[TheBladeRoden]

*Cries in GTX 1050 TI*

[brandino]

I wanted to see how my 1070 would do.....7 fps. Woohoo!

[Keyser_Soze]

V1.2 patch came out today

 

Quote

In June, we released our ray-traced remaster of the beloved 1997 first-person shooter. Now, we’re launching a major v1.2 update that further improves graphical fidelity, and introduces new configuration options so you can tailor the experience to your liking.

Most noticeably, we’ve updated over 400 textures to improve image quality, and have improved the rendering of metals, which together significantly enhance the look of many levels and areas.

 

 

Water has improved, too, with the rendering of underwater god rays, and the display of god rays in reflections and refractions, which can improve the realism and illumination of surrounding detail.

 

 

Real-time ray-traced graphics can now be shown on security monitors and other displays, improving scene detail and immersion:

 

 

Recursive reflections (reflections reflected on other reflections) can now be rendered on select surfaces, creating a hall of mirrors effect:

 

 

The rendering of glass has been improved, along with the rendering of reflections, refractions and god rays through the glass. And we’ve introduced a new optional setting that further improves the quality of glass rendering:

 

 

Note: Thick Glass image captured in paused screenshot (reference) mode, to fully demonstrate the new option’s capabilities

Additionally, we’ve also made numerous changes and improvements to denoising and other rendering features, improving image quality in all levels, and greatly improving quality in certain scenes:

 

 

Tinted glass now affects light passing through it, and together with the aforementioned improvements, this scene’s fidelity is greatly improved

And finally, we’ve introduced several new graphics options and toggles:

 

Resolution Scaling Options: previously, you could decrease the internal rendering resolution to improve performance, or crank up the resolution to increase image quality. Now, there are options to enable dynamic resolution scaling - when dynamic scale is activated, the game will try to keep the target frame rate by adjusting the scale between minimum and maximum. By default, the option will try to keep your gameplay at 60 FPS by scaling between 50% and 100% resolution scaling. If the game is faster than 60 FPS at 100%, it will not increase the scale further, so if you see you have a ton of extra performance, increase “Maximum Scale”

Reflection and Refraction Depth: configure the number of allowed reflection or refraction bounces, which most prominently affects the recursive reflections demonstrated earlier

Temporal Anti-Aliasing Toggle: enable or disable our post-process anti-aliasing

Security Cameras: enable security camera monitors to display real-time gameplay, as shown above

Thick Glass Refraction: experimental option that renders more physically accurate representations of thick glass, with internal reflection and refraction

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-v1-2-update/

 

[Keyser_Soze]

 

 

Quote

Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.4.0, featuring added support for final Vulkan Ray Tracing API, and enabling dynamic selection between the pre-existing NVIDIA VKRay and the new Khronos extension backends.

 

New Features:

•     Added support for final Vulkan Ray Tracing API. The game can now run on any GPU supporting `VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline` extension
•     Added temporal upscaling, or TAAU, for improved image quality at lower resolution scales.

 

Fixed Issues:

•     Fixed a crash that happened when there are no available sound devices.
•     Fixed a few issues with the tone mapper and the profiler for AMD GPU compatibility.
•     Fixed a server crash: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/86
•     Fixed black materials and some light leaks: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/55
•     Fixed missing railgun lights in photo mode: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/75
•     Fixed missing sun light on geometry with invalid clusters.
•     Fixed the CFLAGS for MinSizeRel and RelWithDebInfo builds to generate correct debug symbols.
•     Fixed the game stuttering on Linux: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/62
•     Fixed the issue with all models being missing or corrupted on some maps during network play.
•     Fixed the nearest filter when DRS was enabled and then disabled.
•     Fixed building the game with GCC10 on Linux: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/80

 

Denoiser Improvements:

•     Implemented a new gradient estimation algorithm that makes the image more stable in reflections and refractions.
•     Implemented sampling across checkerboard fields in the temporal filter to reduce blurring.
•     Improved motion vectors for multiple refraction, in particular when thick glass is enabled.
•     Improved the temporal filter to avoid smearing on surfaces that appear at small glancing angles, e.g. on the floor when going up the stairs.
•     Improved the temporal filter to make lighting more stable on high-detail surfaces.

 

Misc Improvements:

•     Added git branch name to the game version info.
•     Improved the console log to get more information in case of game crashes.
•     Increased precision of printed FPS when running timedemos.
•     Reduced the amount of stutter that happened when new geometry is loaded, like on weapon pickup.
•     Replaced the Vulkan headers stored in the repository with a submodule pointing to https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Headers
•     Static resolution scale can now be set to as low as 25%.
•     Vulkan validation layer can now be enabled through the `vk_validation` cvar.
•     Updated SDL2 version to changeset 13784.