A Half Life 2 modder, Igor Zdrowowicz, has managed to integrate path tracing into the game - with striking results, even at an early stage in development. His project - codenamed "HL2RTX" - has been in-progress for a handful of months, and the modder has managed to integrate a ray tracing system into Valve's classic shooter (sort of) via NVIDIA's RTX Remix SDK. That package has become open source only very recently, so Zdrowowicz stated that a Portal RTX-derived binary was the tool of choice.

NVIDIA's Lightspeed Studios has already created an impressive RTX conversion of Valve's fan favorite puzzle-platform game Portal (2007), and modders have been poring over the underlying technology and update technique processes. A number of old favorites, running on past iterations of the Source Engine (DirectX 8 and 9), are getting the amateur mod community sprucing up treatment. It is posited that Zdrowowicz will have an easier time with his current conversion project, thanks to an official release of NVIDIA's RTX Remix toolkit (albeit in early access).

A new game on Steam DB titled "Half Life2: Remastered" raised eyebrows across the web. Unlike "Crysis Remastered," which is an official Crytek upcoming title that adds content to the path-breaking shooter from the late-2000s, "Half Life 2: Remastered" doesn't come from Valve, as DSOGaming explains. Developed by Filip Victor, author of the community-made "Half Life 2: Update," a mod for your HL2 installation; "Remastered" adds some new content such as improved lighting, a revamped HDR implementation, and an improved fog. If "Update" is any indication, "Remastered" could be a continuous community effort, adding content to HL2. The holy grail in our opinion would be Valve releasing master versions of its textures for the game, so the game could receive a texture quality update. Find more details in the Steam DB listing here.