NVIDIA is commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Half-Life 2, releasing a tribute video that includes an exclusive peek at the upcoming Half-Life 2 RTX remaster. In addition, NVIDIA has launched the Half-Life 2 Anniversary Sweepstakes with a custom wrapped Half-Life 2 GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card.

With November 16th marking the 20th anniversary of the launch of Half-Life 2, NVIDIA released a tribute video that includes an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming Half-Life 2 RTX remaster. Developed by Orbifold Studios, a collective of developers who love Half-Life and were behind Half-Life 2: VR, Half-Life 2: Remade Assets, Project 17, and Rising the Bar: Redux, Half-Life 2 RTX is a community-made RTX Remix Project that will include full ray tracing, DLSS 3, and Reflex support.

NVIDIA RTX Remix enables modders to reimagine classic games with full ray tracing, also known as path tracing, and to update models and textures with modern rendering features that work hand in hand with ray-traced effects to deliver the level of graphical fidelity seen in Portal with RTX, our ray-traced reimagining of Valve's classic game. And with a few additional clicks, support for NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex can be introduced, accelerating performance and making gameplay even more responsive.

Following the launch of the RTX Remix Open Beta in January, we're today introducing new features and optimizations, headlined by the addition of NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction, an AI model that creates higher quality ray-traced images for intensive ray-traced games and apps. Additionally, we're taking a look at some work in progress RTX Remix mods, and checking in with Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, to demonstrate the toolkit's capabilities.

PC game modding is colossal - over 10 billion game mods are downloaded each year. Mods enhance graphics as faster GPUs are released, extend a game's lifespan with new content, and expand their audience with total gameplay conversions. With NVIDIA RTX Remix, we're enabling modders to remaster their favorite classic games with full ray tracing (also known as path tracing), NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, modern physically-based rendering (PBR) assets, and generative AI texture tools. Starting now all modders can download the NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta, for free, from here.

RTX Remix has already delivered stunning remasters in NVIDIA's own Portal with RTX, and the modder-made Portal: Prelude RTX. Now, Orbifold Studios is using RTX Remix to develop Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community remaster of one of the highest-rated games of all time.

NVIDIA RTX Remix Community is a group of game developers remastering popular games from the past. "Quake II RTX" and "Portal with RTX" were extremely well received, and the community now turned its sights to a cult classic—Half-Life 2. When it came out in 2004 (that's 19 years ago!), Half-Life 2 already set standards for realism, and invented several new gameplay mechanics. It is believed to have edged past "Doom 3" in art direction and production quality for the time; and now the RTX Remix Community is inviting game modders to join the effort at this page.

Four of HL2's top modding teams, known as Orbfold Studios, is leading the effort within the community, at remastering the entire game—an effort on a much larger scale than "Portal." The remaster will include full ray tracing effects, support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation, RTX-IO, and modernized assets (higher resolution textures, higher poly-count models, with support for modern surfaces and geometry. The teaser from NVIDIA includes a picture of the HEV Suit from the game, and a scene from the game showing just how much more advanced the game is shaping up to be! The company didn't announce any timeline to go with Half-Life 2 RTX, since it is still in development.