During the CES 2024 Special Address livestream, NVIDIA announced the release date of the long-anticipated RTX Remix Creator Kit Open Beta.
RTX Remix was originally unveiled in September 2022 alongside the GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. NVIDIA promised modders an AI-assisted modding platform geared towards 'remastering' older games with cutting-edge features like AI texture upscaling, Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 3, Reflex, RTX IO, path tracing, and more.
RTX Remix works by intercepting the original game's draw calls with a bridge, converting it from DirectX8 or 9 (it doesn't currently support the most recent DX releases since it was designed to work on fixed function pipeline games) to a Vulkan rendering pipeline, which allows the RTX Renderer to add the aforementioned features to these classic PC games. Assets are captured and converted to the Universal Scene Description (USD) open framework so they can then be tweaked in NVIDIA's Omniverse software.
NVIDIA showed Portal RTX, which was remastered by their own Lightspeed Studios team using RTX Remix, and a demo of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. That was more than enough to make modders hooked, as testified by my interview with Skyblivion lead developer Rebelzize.
As soon as Portal RTX dropped in December 2022, modders began 'hacking' the RTX Remix framework into various games, such as Morrowind itself, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, Battlefield 1942, Torchlight, Mount and Blade, Need for Speed Underground 2, and more.
In April 2203, NVIDIA released the software's runtime via an open source license. However, it still wasn't the full creator kit, which was only provided to select modding teams in early access so they could start working on big projects like Portal: Prelude RTX and Half-Life 2 RTX (which got a new trailer today, as you can see below).
That is all changing on January 22, allowing many more modders access to the full feature set of the RTX Remix modding platform. Of course, NVIDIA is likely to add even more features to the framework after launch, so this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more on RTX Remix as we get closer to the launch.
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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