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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

So this only runs on Nvidia cards?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

gravity wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 19:06:
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.

Unfortunately, that's not even remotely what's happening. Valve has nothing to do with this project, other than giving their blessing for it to be made. It's being done by Orbifold Studios using Nvidia's RTX Remix modding software. No changes are being made to the Source engine for this.

Nullity wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 15:19:

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.

No, I get it, it's just a coincidence that I happened to be typing my reply at the same time as someone else. I chose fire because it's one of the most stark comparisons in the early parts of the video I linked. After a bunch of examples showing where the remaster offers the higher level of small details we expect in games today, there comes a real shattering of rose-tinted glasses when an enemy is set ablaze in the classic version and it has no impact on the environment whatsoever. In fact, he continues casting the simple drop shadow from the nearby overhead lamp: https://youtu.be/QHRS0TO89UI?t=460

This is still an early version of what they're creating, as can plainly be seen by the many assets in these two levels that have yet to be updated. I'm not saying they couldn't continue tweaking things like scene composition, but apparently I'm just not that bothered by what they have going on now. If anything, I feel the remaining dark spots are even more impactful in contrast to the areas that are now brighter.

I genuinely think they do. Even if it's "third party assistance." Something is pointing towards HL3, and I'm totally for it.

What I get from it is that it's pretty good to go back and add this tech to games made before the tech was available BUUUUUUUUT.....there was a dev team that had a look and feel in mind and designed the game to get that look and feel using the tech they had at the time. If all you change is this one tech, it has some domino effects that can mess with those previous efforts. Making things brighter than they should, for example, illuminating areas that weren't meant to be illuminated and thus changing the "feel" of the scene or location. That said, my overall impression, as it was with Quake 2 and other games, is that adding these technologies after the fact is a net gain overall, even if it is going to clash with some design decisions that were made to compensate for the tech limitations of the time. Eventually, someone will find a way to fix those types of conflicts as well.

Jivaro wrote on Mar 18, 2025, 19:42:
BUUUUUUUUT.....there was a dev team that had a look and feel in mind and designed the game to get that look and feel using the tech they had at the time.

And? Did Valve delete HL2 classic?

Spoiler: They did not.

Anyone and everyone is free to play the classic version and to enhance or enshittify it as they see fit. Maybe some people should google "nVidia Remix" (again) and look up what it's all about and what it is not all about.

Some suggestions:

- nVidia Remix Open Beta announcement video
- nVidia Remix DLSS4 and Neural Rendering video
- Getting started with nVidia RTX Remix playlist
- Original nVidia RTX Remix Reveal video (they announced Remix at the RTX 4000 series reveal over two years ago)

No one is taking away anything from you here. As was pointed out, this HL2 Remix effort is done by a 3rd party studio. Did anyone delete HL1 classic because someone made Black Mesa? Nope. So how about approaching this technological marvel with an open mind or is the nVidia hate really that blinding? (rhetorical question)

Of course not. I didn't say I wouldn't or couldn't play the original. Stop looking for an argument where there isn't one.

And yes, that's what you are doing. Before you argue with me..lol

This part at the end of my post...read it again as I am completely at a loss for how I would possibly be disagreeing with your point:
"That said, my overall impression, as it was with Quake 2 and other games, is that adding these technologies after the fact is a net gain overall, even if it is going to clash with some design decisions that were made to compensate for the tech limitations of the time. Eventually, someone will find a way to fix those types of conflicts as well."

@Jivaro

Yeah, I quoted your post but my reply was generally directed towards the naysayers here. Don't take it personal . Your quote just fit the previously expressed sentiment pretty well where some people were pretending as if something here is taken away from them or being defiled by nVidia, the devil incarnate (... when this really isn't the case at all as the original version isn't going anywhere AND while this is just a Remix demo of two levels with unfinished tweaking/lighting/optimizations AND most/many of the naysayers haven't even downloaded or played the demo yet to see or compare for themselves).