Quake II RTX Updated with More Sharper Textures and Better Lighting Effects

[btarunr]

NVIDIA today released a major update to Quake II RTX that add even more eye-candy to the game, leveraging RTX. Quake II RTX, promoted by NVIDIA, is a playable tech-demo for its RTX real-time ray-tracing technology that's based on a classic 3D game so it runs on nearly all DXR-compatible graphics cards (GeForce GTX 10-series, 16-series, and RTX 20-series). It comes with id Software's shareware 1st episode content, although you can add your own licensed game data for the full game.

With version 1.2, NVIDIA added support for a boatload of modern technology, beginning with support for dynamic resolution scaling. Much like watching online videos with resolution toggle set to "auto" (which adjusts resolution based on your Internet bandwidth), dynamic resolution scaling adjusts the rendering resolution of your game on the fly in pursuit of a frames-per-second target. NVIDIA also remastered several textures of the game, increasing texture detail. Over 400 textures have been redone by NVIDIA, adding detail. Support is added for multiple reflection/refraction bounces, which makes it possible to create a "hall of mirrors" effect. NVIDIA implemented light shafts or god rays throughout the game, including underwater light shafts. Light shafts also get reflected off certain metal or glass surfaces. NVIDIA also improved the AI denoiser for the game. Metal and glass surfaces are made to appear more photo-real thanks to denoiser improvements. Find many other technical changes in the official change-log below.



DOWNLOAD: Quake II RTX v1.2
New Features:

• Added support for dynamic resolution scaling that adjusts rendering resolution to meet an FPS target.
• Added support for multiple reflection or refraction bounces.
• Added light coloring by tinted glass.
• Added support for security camera views on some monitors in the game.
• Added god rays in reflections and refractions, improved god rays filtering.
• Added a spatial denoiser for the specular channel.
• Added support for loading custom sky (portal) light meshes from.obj files, and added portal light definitions for many maps in the base game.
• Added triangular lights for laser beams: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/43
• Added "shader balls" to the shipping builds.
• Added cvar 'pt_accumulation_rendering_framenum' to control how many frames to accumulate in the reference mode.
• Added cvar 'pt_show_sky' to make analyzing skybox geometry easier.

Fixed Issues:

• Fixed the stutter caused by Steam overlay by updating to the latest version of SDL2.
• Fixed Stroggos atmospheric scattering (sky color) and overall sky brightness.
• Fixed light scattering on the clouds.
• Fixed the issue with overexposed player setup screen: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/18
• Fixed the sudden darkening of the screen: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/26
• Fixed the "PF_centerprintf to a non-client" warnings that happened on the "command" map when the computers are blown up, instead of informative on-screen messages.
• Fixed missing GI on reflections of the first person model.

Denoising and image stability improvements:

• Improved image quality and temporal stability of reflections and refractions by computing correct motion vectors for reflected surfaces and surfaces visible through flat glass.
• Disabled the pixel jitter when temporal AA is turned off.
• Added sample jitter to the spatial denoiser to improve the noise patterns that appear after light invalidation.
• Improved image stability around blinking lights by using the light intensities from the previous frame on gradient pixels.
• Improved stability of indirect lighting from sphere lights by limiting their contribution.
• Added storage scaling for all lighting channels to avoid color quantization.
• Fixed flickering that happened when the number of dynamic lights changes.
• Improved sharpness of textured glass and similar transmissive effects by passing them around the denoiser.
• Added multiple importance sampling of specular reflections of direct lights.
• Replaced sphere lights that were used for wall lamps (mostly in the "train" map) with polygon lights to reduce noise.
• Added an upper limit on sky luminance to avoid oversampling the sky in shadowed areas and thus reduce noise from direct lights.
• Added light sampling correction based on statistical per-cluster light visibility. The idea is, if we see that a light is usually not visible, let's not sample it so much.

Material improvements:

• Metals are now rendered much better thanks to the denoiser and BRDF improvements.
• Over 400 textures have been adjusted or repainted.
• Removed the nonlinear transform from emissive textures, and reduced the negative bias applied to them.
• Force light materials to be opaque to make the laser lights in mine maps appear in reflections.
• Restore specular on materials with roughness = 1, but make specular on rough dielectrics much dimmer.

Shading and BRDF improvements:

• Fixed scaling of diffuse and specular reflections: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/37
• Fixed relative brightness and spotlight terms for different light types.
• Hemisphere sampling for indirect diffuse tuned to make the results better match the cosine-weighted sampling in reference mode.
• Trace more specular rays for shiny metals that do not need indirect diffuse lighting.
• Fixed the misdirection of second bounce lighting into the diffuse channel when the light path starts as specular on the primary surface: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/25
• Replaced regular NDF sampling for specular bounce rays with visible NDF sampling: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/40
• Tuned fake specular to be closer to reference specular.
• Added normalization of normal map vectors on load to avoid false roughness adjustments by the Toksvig factor.
• Improved roughness correction to not happen on texture magnification, and to better handle cases like zero roughness.
• Fixed the computation of N.V to avoid potential NaNs: https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/23

Miscellaneous Improvements:

• Removed the multiplayer specific sun position setting, and changed the remaining setting to be morning by default.
• Changed the default value of texture LOD bias to 0 for extra sharpness.
• Use nearest filter for upscaling from 50% resolution scale (a.k.a integer scaling).
• Made the brightness of sprites, beams, particles, smoke, and effects like quad damage be similar to overall scene brightness, to avoid having them washed out under direct sunlight.
• Made the explosions and other sprites appear in low-roughness specular reflections.
• Changed the flare lights to be derived from the flare model entity instead of the effect event, which makes the lights follow the flares smoothly in flight, and reduces flicker that was due to frequent light creation and destruction.
• Removed insane and dead soldiers with 'nomonsters 1'.
• Random number generator now produces enough different sequences to cover thousands of frames for reference mode accumulation.
• The 'pt_direct_polygon_lights' cvar has a new meaning when set to -1: all polygon lights are sampled through the indirect lighting shader, for comparison purposes.
• Moved the first person player model a bit backwards to avoid having it block reflections.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[phanbuey]

2019, the year I beat Quake 2, 3 times...

 

[TheDeeGee]

And better Plastic looks...

 

[Arct1c0n]

Yawn....... let me know when they do Unreal Tournament

 

[BumbleBee]

compatible with gamespy? lets get it on with the killing!

 

[Vayra86]

Yawn....... let me know when they do Unreal Tournament

Holy crap I'd be ALL over that. Ut99 RT? I'll insta buy a 2060S just to play it.

But Q2, I mean its nice as a demo, but it has a very high been there done that vibe to it... and its far fetched to say the RT adds realism in any sort of way.

 

[bug]

Shouldn't that be "More Sharper Textures and More Better Lighting Effects"?

 

[Valantar]

Shouldn't that be "More Sharper Textures and More Better Lighting Effects"?

I came to this comments section with the sole purpose of pointing out "more sharper". Well done, though, as you clearly improved on the original.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yawn....... let me know when they do Unreal Tournament

Pass... Now Unreal Gold? Oh yeah, I'm in.

Hell, Quake1 and I'm in!

 

[Grog6]

I like the fact that Nvidia went back to the best FPS game to try to make their point.

We still play Q2: ground zero.

We play on a lan, with cheats enabled.

We allow one give all on spawn, and one give all after each kill.

We've been playing together a long time, and there are no cheaters; when our guys get frustrated enough to cheat, you notice Fred's in GOdMode, lol.

Or Jimmy using NoClip to hide in a wall, lol.

Try this with your local group; there's not fighting over the big items, and it's a WFO fragfest.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I like the fact that Nvidia went back to the best FPS game to try to make their point.

We still play Q2: ground zero.

We play on a lan, with cheats enabled.

We allow one give all on spawn, and one give all after each kill.

We've been playing together a long time, and there are no cheaters; when our guys get frustrated enough to cheat, you notice Fred's in GOdMode, lol.

Or Jimmy using NoClip to hide in a wall, lol.

Try this with your local group; there's not fighting over the big items, and it's a WFO fragfest.

I made 15 DM maps for Q2 that I still have filed away. I’m curious how they would look in RT mode, but just not curious enough to spring for an RTX card.

 

[Grog6]

You know, I've got a ton of maps for various games, but the best ones are Research hangar, The longest three feet, and one that a space station I can't remember the name of right now; I'll look it up after dinner.

The last version I played was in UT3.

 

[cucker tarlson]

played q2 rtx demo,really entertaining.wish nvidia did more of those remakes.

But Q2, I mean its nice as a demo, but it has a very high been there done that vibe to it... and its far fetched to say the RT adds realism in any sort of way.

playing some levels I was really surprissed to see what shadows and reflections are really supposed to look like.To see the shadow of a guy coming from around the corner first was pretty sick.the more is happening the better.

I mean,if the question is if realistic light,reflections and shadows add to realiism it's hard to claim they don't

 

[Legacy-ZA]

You know, I've got a ton of maps for various games, but the best ones are Research hangar, The longest three feet, and one that a space station I can't remember the name of right now; I'll look it up after dinner.

The last version I played was in UT3.

DM-Phobus or DM-Morpheus?

 

[Vayra86]

played q2 rtx demo,really entertaining.wish nvidia did more of those remakes.


playing some levels I was really surprissed to see what shadows and reflections are really supposed to look like.To see the shadow of a guy coming from around the corner first was pretty sick.the more is happening the better.

I mean,if the question is if realistic light,reflections and shadows add to realiism it's hard to claim they don't

Well... what I've seen looked pretty weird tbf. Its a nice proof of concept, sure... When you zoom in on the individual effects, yes, its nice. But the whole picture/atmosphere doesn't really work that well IMO, and realistic it sure as hell is not. Lighting still seems 'off'

Realism, shadows... what happened here then? I get the sense its not all that 'it just works' at all, but rather needs to be fine tuned meticulously. Or put differently: if you don't code for it, its not happening. Sounds quite similar to rasterized

Here's another fantastic not rendered shadow. But it gets better. There is a point light behind the dude in front. Yet the shadows from those blocks are calculated from a different light source apparently somewhere in the ceiling... but then why does the point light still render shadow in the foreground?!

Trickery, I say

Just for comparison purposes. Let's look at a dynamic shadow in Dead Space (2008). It runs on a toaster. Oh no, jaggies...

Don't let the RTX hype blind you from what's what.

 

[ratirt]

Well... what I've seen looked pretty weird tbf. Its a nice proof of concept, sure... When you zoom in on the individual effects, yes, its nice. But the whole picture/atmosphere doesn't really work that well IMO, and realistic it sure as hell is not. Lighting still seems 'off'

Realism, shadows... what happened here then? I get the sense its not all that 'it just works' at all, but rather needs to be fine tuned meticulously. Or put differently: if you don't code for it, its not happening. Sounds quite similar to rasterized

View attachment 137755

Here's another fantastic not rendered shadow. But it gets better. There is a point light behind the dude in front. Yet the shadows from those blocks are calculated from a different light source apparently somewhere in the ceiling... but then why does the point light still render shadow in the foreground?!

Trickery, I say

View attachment 137757

Just for comparison purposes. Let's look at a dynamic shadow in Dead Space (2008). It runs on a toaster. Oh no, jaggies...

View attachment 137764

Don't let the RTX hype blind you from what's what.

Good catch. If it is supposed to be "RT on" there should be reflections and shadows were a light source and an object blocking it are present. In this case it is not like that so.... What the hell is that? That puts the Q2 RT into question or maybe the in-game light-source is not considered a light source in the game and the RT is not applied? Anyway this is weird.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Well... what I've seen looked pretty weird tbf. Its a nice proof of concept, sure... When you zoom in on the individual effects, yes, its nice. But the whole picture/atmosphere doesn't really work that well IMO, and realistic it sure as hell is not. Lighting still seems 'off'

Realism, shadows... what happened here then? I get the sense its not all that 'it just works' at all, but rather needs to be fine tuned meticulously. Or put differently: if you don't code for it, its not happening. Sounds quite similar to rasterized

View attachment 137755

Here's another fantastic not rendered shadow. But it gets better. There is a point light behind the dude in front. Yet the shadows from those blocks are calculated from a different light source apparently somewhere in the ceiling... but then why does the point light still render shadow in the foreground?!

Trickery, I say

View attachment 137757

Just for comparison purposes. Let's look at a dynamic shadow in Dead Space (2008). It runs on a toaster. Oh no, jaggies...

View attachment 137764

Don't let the RTX hype blind you from what's what.

Having made many maps for Q2 as a hobby, the only thing I can suspect is that in these cases the light texture isn’t doing the lighting entirely. Yes, the textures in the game provided some light, but it was never enough to properly light the room, as if you ramp up the texture intensity too high, it washes out the light texture and looks unnatural (there is no bloom or HDR). The solution is to add an invisible light source. You could approach this two ways—put low intensity lights in front of every light source, or put a bigger light out in the middle of the room, or even both depending on the mood you are trying to achieve. I’m not sure if RTX Quake actually went in and reconfigured this, or if it is still using the lighting tricks above. It would quickly explain the issues you’re finding, as there may not be “true” lighting going on at the design level.

 

[Slizzo]

Well... what I've seen looked pretty weird tbf. Its a nice proof of concept, sure... When you zoom in on the individual effects, yes, its nice. But the whole picture/atmosphere doesn't really work that well IMO, and realistic it sure as hell is not. Lighting still seems 'off'

Realism, shadows... what happened here then? I get the sense its not all that 'it just works' at all, but rather needs to be fine tuned meticulously. Or put differently: if you don't code for it, its not happening. Sounds quite similar to rasterized

View attachment 137755

Here's another fantastic not rendered shadow. But it gets better. There is a point light behind the dude in front. Yet the shadows from those blocks are calculated from a different light source apparently somewhere in the ceiling... but then why does the point light still render shadow in the foreground?!

Trickery, I say

View attachment 137757

Just for comparison purposes. Let's look at a dynamic shadow in Dead Space (2008). It runs on a toaster. Oh no, jaggies...



Don't let the RTX hype blind you from what's what.

In the first screen shot I can see the very very soft shadow that is cast by that "soldier" on the ground. Since the light source is red, it doesn't reflect nearly as much as a bright white light would. For those ammo boxes behind him, there's white point lights directly above the boxes, as well as a little bit in front and to the sides; I wouldn't expect much if any shadow from them.

In the second shot, I can't explain the one guy in the back left. The guy in front and the ammo boxes, there's a big white point light facing that direction, casting that shadow, and those boxes are too close to the wall to catch the light from behind them that is casting the soldier closer to the screen's shadow towards you. He's also close enough and out of the light to your back's range to cast shadow behind him and be lit from the front.


I'm not positive, but I think they're only really calculating a few rays per area, may have been increased for the 1.2 patch. This also depends on if they're maxing out the ray quality or have that dynamic resolution option turned on.

 

[Vayra86]

In the first screen shot I can see the very very soft shadow that is cast by that "soldier" on the ground. Since the light source is red, it doesn't reflect nearly as much as a bright white light would. For those ammo boxes behind him, there's white point lights directly above the boxes, as well as a little bit in front and to the sides; I wouldn't expect much if any shadow from them.

In the second shot, I can't explain the one guy in the back left. The guy in front and the ammo boxes, there's a big white point light facing that direction, casting that shadow, and those boxes are too close to the wall to catch the light from behind them that is casting the soldier closer to the screen's shadow towards you. He's also close enough and out of the light to your back's range to cast shadow behind him and be lit from the front.


I'm not positive, but I think they're only really calculating a few rays per area, may have been increased for the 1.2 patch. This also depends on if they're maxing out the ray quality or have that dynamic resolution option turned on.

Maybe we're seeing different things.

But the first screen, has no shadow under the soldier, I looked long and hard... You can see the same color tints on the rest of the floor at the same horizontal axis to confirm and also in the foreground there are many spots like it - what we're looking at is a lowres blurry texture. Furthermore, there are white point lights which you say are causing the boxes not to have shadowing, which I'd consider also incorrect because there are multiple white light sources here, neither box is directly vertical under both) - but they're also really not highlighted on the top or on either sides. Given the rather bright highlight on the walls, you'd expect some of it to hit the boxes too.

Also, about pic 1; if that soldier is casting his (very visible, black) shadow on the glass panel's pane, how could it ever have another vague shadow on his left side? And why is the shadow on the pane not extended on the floor?

Pic 2, the point light behind the soldier is stuck to the wall, the boxes are not, and they even get a highlight (left box, left side) from it. If the light source is 'floating' the boxes should cast more distinct shadowing in the opposite direction, and if the light was stuck inside the wall, it should cast shadow from those boxes towards the water.

So many questions... but Im not buying your 'excuses', sorry. The longer I look at these, the more I'm seeing standard render trickery that doesn't match with the rays being cast.

 

[Dyatlov A]

Unreal Tournament, NFS II, NFS Porsche Unleashed wanted with RTX graphics too!

 

[cucker tarlson]

Well... what I've seen looked pretty weird tbf. Its a nice proof of concept, sure... When you zoom in on the individual effects, yes, its nice. But the whole picture/atmosphere doesn't really work that well IMO, and realistic it sure as hell is not. Lighting still seems 'off'

Realism, shadows... what happened here then? I get the sense its not all that 'it just works' at all, but rather needs to be fine tuned meticulously. Or put differently: if you don't code for it, its not happening. Sounds quite similar to rasterized

View attachment 137755

Here's another fantastic not rendered shadow. But it gets better. There is a point light behind the dude in front. Yet the shadows from those blocks are calculated from a different light source apparently somewhere in the ceiling... but then why does the point light still render shadow in the foreground?!

Trickery, I say

View attachment 137757

Just for comparison purposes. Let's look at a dynamic shadow in Dead Space (2008). It runs on a toaster. Oh no, jaggies...

View attachment 137764

Don't let the RTX hype blind you from what's what.

there's examples of little recources being put to great use and elaborate tools failing.
rtrt is a suepr powerful tool for developers,they'll be ones that do it justice (control) and those who fail (dunno,bf5 maybe ?).
imo all things considered q2 rtx is closer to being a success than a failure.

 

[Vayra86]

there's examples of little recources being put to great use and elaborate tools failing.
rtrt is a suepr powerful tool for developers,they'll be ones that do it justice (control) and those who fail.
imo all things considered q2 rtx is closer to being a success than a failure.

Don't get me wrong, I like the effort for Q2. But I was going deeper into our back and forth about 'realism'. The things I pointed out are exactly the reasons it comes across as artificial, uncanny. It also highlights how strongly RT is still in its infancy.

Remember the Neon Noir demo and how we zoomed in on bullet casings? This is similar. But Neon Noir did run on regular hardware, and pretty well at that, too. We act like the tech is new, but we can get ridiculously close with just software and existing hardware. Perhaps even achieving better overall results. The atmosphere in Neon Noir is artistically 'complete', Q2 is visibly missing stuff.

 

[cucker tarlson]

Don't get me wrong, I like the effort for Q2. But I was going deeper into our back and forth about 'realism'. The things I pointed out are exactly the reasons it comes across as artificial, uncanny.

yes but that scene is not all scenes in q2.
I like to appreciate the good more than the bad.
IMO shadows and ambient occlusion in many contemporary games are trash and RT shadows is where I'd like the industry to move.

 

[Vayra86]

yes but that scene is not all scenes in q2.
I like to appreciate the good more than the bad.
IMO shadows and ambient occlusion in many contemporary games are trash and RT shadows is where I'd like the industry to move.

Agreed. Especially AO is far from perfect and feels weird. I usually use it because it does give the picture more definition, but yea.

 

[bug]

Don't get me wrong, I like the effort for Q2. But I was going deeper into our back and forth about 'realism'.

A 22 year old game might not be the best place to look for realism
This just got RTRT slapped onto it because it's one of the most beloved games of all time, not because it has a great lighting model.