Six months after its announcement, the NVIDIA RTX Remix runtime is finally available to the public as an open source software released under the MIT license via GitHub.
Modders have been using the NVIDIA RTX Remix files used in Portal RTX to try enhancing old games for quite a few months, but the whole process should be a lot easier now. It'll be even better when the Creator Toolkit becomes available, too. NVIDIA says it'll happen soon, though the software will be released in early access. When the Creator Toolkit is launched, modders will be allowed to add brand new lights and assets, as well as remaster the game's existing assets with advanced AI upscaling.
Meanwhile, you can already take advantage of the following components in your NVIDIA RTX Remix projects:
- USD capture and replacement modules, which are responsible for capturing a game scene to USD, and replacing original game assets with modded game assets at runtime.
- Bridge, which translates the renderer from an x86 to an x64 instruction set. This component uncaps the memory available for rendering.
- Scene manager, which uses information coming through the D3D9 fixed-function API to create a representation of the original scene, track game objects frame to frame, and set up the scene to be path traced.
- The core path tracer, which includes the rendering loop, the material handling, and the game-specific rendering features (e.g., decals and particles).
The NVIDIA RTX Remix repository also outlines the software's development roadmap. Right now, the team is working on terrain blending (rendering terrain by baking blended textures together, which was common when those games were designed, and then adding the material replacement), anti-culling (to get the games to draw more geometry, which is helpful for path tracing, and possibly to cache previously seen objects), and increased game compatibility.
In the near future, you can look forward to OpenGL support added via a wrapper, improved performance for the bridging functionality, and improvements to setting up the games in the NVIDIA RTX Remix runtime. Long term, there are some ambitious goals on the roadmap:
- Subsurface scattering support for foliage at first;
- Improved visual compatibility with rasterized materials;
- Advanced sky support for HDR and volumetrics;
- Advanced mod stacking support, which will be particularly useful for games like The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind;
- Support for skinned mesh replacement.
NVIDIA RTX Remix will be expanded even further by closely working alongside the community. Stay tuned on Wccftech to get news on the latest and greatest remastering projects from enterprising modders.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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