Tuesday, June 4th 2019

Quake II RTX to Launch on Steam

NVIDIA plans to release their adaptation of Quake, called Quake II RTX, soon on Steam. The Quake II RTX will be free(in some cases) to play, full Quake II game, with additional features such as ray tracing. The game is using Vulkan API for its Ray Tracing capabilities and requires NVIDIA's Turing GPUs in order to play with and use all of the advanced lighting effects.

All the owners of the original Quake II on Steam will get the RTX update free of charge. However, new users will get only 3 levels to play for free and if they want more levels with multiplayer as well, they will have to purchase the original Quake II for $4.99. The game will become available on June 6th, one day from present.
NVIDIA also published specifications required to run the game. Here is the list of minimum hardware needed:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 7 64-bit or Ubuntu 16.04.6 and newer
  • Processor: Intel i3-3220 or AMD Equivalent
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 2060 or higher
  • Storage: 2 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: Vulkan
If you wish to watch the official game trailer, you can do it here:

For more details about the game, please check the Steam store.
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24 Comments on Quake II RTX to Launch on Steam

#1
TheDeeGee
So i have to spend over 500 Dollars to play a 25 years old game.

Ye, just no Nvidia.
Posted on Reply
#2
dj-electric
TheDeeGeeSo i have to spend over 500 Dollars to play a 25 years old game.

Ye, just no Nvidia.
TIL RTX 2060 is 500$.
On that note, finally. A game light enough to enjoy the benefits of full on real time ray tracing :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#4
er557
Yeah, I play the alpha release on my 1080 sli pascal,
it is nice @1080p maxxed out, nothing life changing though.
Posted on Reply
#5
delshay
Reminds me of Hexen 2 & Heretic 2, both good games which I enjoyed.
Posted on Reply
#6
Deathy
I remember a German student project to convert Quake III into a ray traced game done on the CPU alone in the early to mid 00's. Now, 15 years later we can finally enjoy the predecessor on specific graphics cards. Progress! :D ;)
Posted on Reply
#9
er557
are you sure you ran the latest drivers? on my 1080 SC sli, on xeon 36 core system, the game ran fine @1680x1050, with all settings maxed out. I also installed the weapon mods and the enhanced models from moddb.
Posted on Reply
#10
londiste
There have been a couple different raytraced Quake 2 versions, results are different between them:
- Quake 2 Realtime GPU Pathtracing from couple years ago: amietia.com/q2pt.html
- Q2VKTP: brechpunkt.de/q2vkpt/
- Quake2 RTX will be based on Q2VKPT but enhanced by Nvidia
Posted on Reply
#11
R00kie
er557are you sure you ran the latest drivers? on my 1080 SC sli, on xeon 36 core system, the game ran fine @1680x1050, with all settings maxed out. I also installed the weapon mods and the enhanced models from moddb.
very sure, sli doesnt work in it either
Posted on Reply
#12
Countryside
Required to run the game NVIDIA RTX 2060 or higher

Posted on Reply
#13
R-T-B
er557xeon 36 core
That's probably carrying the raytracing burden, more than your cards.
Posted on Reply
#14
er557
How so, you mean in software?? does vulkan rtx even support such a scenario?
I ran the 3dmark port royal bench, and got results appropriate to two pascal 8gb cards in sli, nothing higher than that...
Posted on Reply
#15
delshay
Can you run Quake 2 expansion packs with this version?
Posted on Reply
#16
er557
I beleive you can, it is using the same pak files and folder structure.
Posted on Reply
#17
R-T-B
er557How so, you mean in software?? does vulkan rtx even support such a scenario?
I am sure the quake2 fork it's based on does.
Posted on Reply
#18
Bjorn_Of_Iceland
They still look like doable with good old art asset hacks imo.
Posted on Reply
#21
londiste
This is not meant to be an AAA game, it is a techdemo. Quakes, thanks to their open source, are a welcome testing ground for various things and for this one Nvidia took someones project to implement Vulkan and path tracing into Quake II - for a thesis on filtering techniques, I believe - and ran with it. While it is still low-poly and despite the model/texture upgrades done looks somewhat dated, it works well as a showcase for ray-tracing - dynamic lights, AO, shadows, reflections, refractions. It honestly looks more impressive than it has any right to.

While whine about performance is fun it is missing the point. Real-time ray-tracing was pretty much out of reach until recently. Running even 40 FPS at 3840x1600 resolution on a (albeit expensive) consumer GPU is a big deal.

Quake II RTX is not a hybrid solution like Battlefield V, Metro Exodus or Shadow of Tomb Raider, this is running fully path traced. RTX vs GTX in Quake II RTX highlights what RT cores are meant do in terms of performance and efficiency as they do get a chance to shine here.
Posted on Reply
#22
Countryside
londisteThis is not meant to be an AAA game, it is a techdemo. Quakes, thanks to their open source, are a welcome testing ground for various things and for this one Nvidia took someones project to implement Vulkan and path tracing into Quake II - for a thesis on filtering techniques, I believe - and ran with it. While it is still low-poly and despite the model/texture upgrades done looks somewhat dated, it works well as a showcase for ray-tracing - dynamic lights, AO, shadows, reflections, refractions. It honestly looks more impressive than it has any right to.

While whine about performance is fun it is missing the point. Real-time ray-tracing was pretty much out of reach until recently. Running even 40 FPS at 3840x1600 resolution on a (albeit expensive) consumer GPU is a big deal.

Quake II RTX is not a hybrid solution like Battlefield V, Metro Exodus or Shadow of Tomb Raider, this is running fully path traced. RTX vs GTX in Quake II RTX highlights what RT cores are meant do in terms of performance and efficiency as they do get a chance to shine here.
Even if ray tracing slowly begins to gain ground, it’ll be 2021 or 2022 before we see many titles significantly supporting it. We already know the performance impact from enabling RTX is in the 30-40 percent range

extremetech.com
Posted on Reply
#23
Lorec
5 fps on 1080ti :D
Posted on Reply
#24
Splinterdog
In the meantime, there's always KMQuake II and Quake II Evolved, both of which look pretty darn good.
Posted on Reply
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