Quake II RTX to Launch on Steam

[AleksandarK]

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TheDeeGee]

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

Ye, just no Nvidia.

 

[dj-electric]

So 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

 

[londiste]

Supposedly GTX cards might have gotten Vulkan extension support as well:

NVIDIA DXR Ray-Tracing Support For Pascal GPUs Does Include Vulkan Support - Phoronix

phoronix.com

Edit:
They did (https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listreports.php?extension=VK_NV_ray_tracing) and there are also reports in the wild that Q2VKPT is playable on GTX cards.

 

[er557]

Yeah, I play the alpha release on my 1080 sli pascal,
it is nice @1080p maxxed out, nothing life changing though.

 

[delshay]

Reminds me of Hexen 2 & Heretic 2, both good games which I enjoyed.

 

[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!

 

[ZeppMan217]

That's gold, Jerry.

 

[R00kie]

Supposedly GTX cards might have gotten Vulkan extension support as well:

NVIDIA DXR Ray-Tracing Support For Pascal GPUs Does Include Vulkan Support - Phoronix

phoronix.com

Edit:
They did (https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listreports.php?extension=VK_NV_ray_tracing) and there are also reports in the wild that Q2VKPT is playable on GTX cards.

not exactly a rumor, I've played the demo on my 1080's SLI, wasnt exactly a playable experience unless you resize the window to 320x240

 

[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.

 

[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: https://amietia.com/q2pt.html
- Q2VKTP: http://brechpunkt.de/q2vkpt/
- Quake2 RTX will be based on Q2VKPT but enhanced by Nvidia

 

[R00kie]

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.

very sure, sli doesnt work in it either

 

[Countryside]

Required to run the game NVIDIA RTX 2060 or higher

 

[R-T-B]

xeon 36 core

That's probably carrying the raytracing burden, more than your cards.

 

[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...

 

[delshay]

Can you run Quake 2 expansion packs with this version?

 

[er557]

I beleive you can, it is using the same pak files and folder structure.

 

[R-T-B]

How so, you mean in software?? does vulkan rtx even support such a scenario?

I am sure the quake2 fork it's based on does.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

They still look like doable with good old art asset hacks imo.

 

[londiste]

It's out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/

Quick try on 1440p with default settings on RTX2080:
timedemo 1
demo demo1.dm2
687 frames, 13.2 seconds: 52.2 fps

Not too bad. Looks pretty. Prettier in movement than in screenshots.

 

[Splinterdog]

Oh dear...

 

[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.

 

[Countryside]

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.

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

 

[Lorec]

5 fps on 1080ti

 

[Splinterdog]

In the meantime, there's always KMQuake II and Quake II Evolved, both of which look pretty darn good.