I'm surprised no one has actually come to the realization of what ValvE is doing here.

IMO, ValvE is absolutely "beta testing" HL3 engine functionality to a degree. Let's take the already-amazing-and-fully-functional engine we have, add ray-tracing, and "ensure we have full compatibility and thumbs-up from our community."

Am I alone? This is incredible "early access" sort of methodology.

4070/5800X/32GB/Win11/all latest drivers here. Lot of complaining this thread. Played for an hour it’s an awesome project. Mostly around 60fps on dlss 4 balanced transformer model. Looking forward to the eventual full version.

RT lighting really is transformative, hope it’s in all games like this someday. The best realtime lighting I’ve ever seen (but haven’t played CP2077 Overdrive RT). Portal RTX is awesome too want to see more like this.

Tried the demo today... To say that it went poorly would be an understatement.

Foreword: 7800X3D + RTX 3070, included VRAM usage bar said I was well within the 8GB limit, latest up to date drivers.

Graphical glitches were everywhere, big black rectangles glitching in and out constantly. Game crashed every few minutes.

After 30 minutes of that shitshow I was done.

noman wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 15:23:
Light bouncing around realistically still can change the artistic vision about which parts of scene are dark and which aren't and which surfaces are shinier. If the original designers had RT lighting, they may have created less bright light sources or placed them differently. It's technically impressive but for many of the scenes in the trailer, the original version looks better.

I think exactly the same and I believe what Nullity was also saying.

Overon wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 16:16:
So this only runs on Nvidia cards?

No, ray tracing can be done on any modern GPU, like Intel Arcs and AMD Radeons. Nvidia "brought it to the masses", but it's not an Nvidia-exclusive process.

So this only runs on Nvidia cards?

Light bouncing around realistically still can change the artistic vision about which parts of scene are dark and which aren't and which surfaces are shinier. If the original designers had RT lighting, they may have created less bright light sources or placed them differently. It's technically impressive but for many of the scenes in the trailer, the original version looks better.

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 15:11:
Of course it's going to be significantly brighter overall, that's just the reality of having light bounce around properly. Any flashlight that isn't a cheap toy should easily fill an entire room, and a fucking bonfire will illuminate an entire city block... Does anyone really think it was an intentional artistic decision to have a humanoid enemy that is engulfed in flames from head to toe *not* project a large amount of light around it? Don't you think they would have liked that to happen, but just couldn't achieve it 20 years ago?

With that said, there is a brightness slider in the options which I did lower a fair amount, as the default made it look pretty washed out. That doesn't do anything to change the number or placement of light sources, though. Many of those in Ravenholm are industrial floodlights, so...

Yeah, big fire is going to be big bright, I get it. I wasn't even talking about fire. Did you watch the video? Most of the comparison shots didn't involve fire and the new version just seemed overly and unnecessarily bright to me. I'm not even trying to say it isn't realistic, using ray/path tracing, I'm sure it is. But as I alluded to in my previous post, it can still be realistic yet maintain the atmosphere by turning down the dimmer switch a little (where appropriate).

I love HL2, and I'll be playing through this. I'm not shitting on the game and I even said I'll reserve judgement until I can see it for myself. I was just voicing my preliminary opinion based only on this video. Chill people.

Of course it's going to be significantly brighter overall, that's just the reality of having light bounce around properly. Any flashlight that isn't a cheap toy should easily fill an entire room, and a fucking bonfire will illuminate an entire city block... Does anyone really think it was an intentional artistic decision to have a humanoid enemy that is engulfed in flames from head to toe *not* project a large amount of light around it? Don't you think they would have liked that to happen, but just couldn't achieve it 20 years ago?

With that said, there is a brightness slider in the options which I did lower a fair amount, as the default made it look pretty washed out. That doesn't do anything to change the number or placement of light sources, though. Many of those in Ravenholm are industrial floodlights, so...

RogueSix wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 15:01:

Nullity wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 13:51:
For example, the lighting/brightness seems to have been cranked up (presumably to show off the RTX effects?).

Nothing's been "cranked". It is just realistic now. Every light source emits a realistic light instead of the fake light as before. You set shit on fire, shit's gonna be bright.

Yeah, you're right. I've never seen a dimly lit room, low wattage bulb, or partially obstructed light source in real life before. I dunno what I was thinking.

Nullity wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 13:51:
For example, the lighting/brightness seems to have been cranked up (presumably to show off the RTX effects?).

Nothing's been "cranked". It is just realistic now. Every light source emits a realistic light instead of the fake light as before. You set shit on fire, shit's gonna be bright.

I played through parts of Ravenholm and the graphics are great. Performance is decent (RTX 4090). But the gameplay is meh in 2025. What a bore.

Anyway, if anyone feels that their pussy-in-the-dark gameplay experience has been watered down, there is nothing stopping you from going back to the 2004 version while dialing down the brightness to pitch black. Just. Do. It.

Graphically yes, it looks great and I'm sure I'll do a playthrough on this version. However, I worry about losing some of the atmosphere and artistic design choices of the original. For example, the lighting/brightness seems to have been cranked up (presumably to show off the RTX effects?). In many areas, like Ravenholm for example, that darkness is integral to the experience.

I'll reserve judgement until I get to try it out though.

Digital Foundry did a good side-by-side playthrough comparison, if you need reminding of just how massively better this looks than the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHRS0TO89UI