“John Carmack is a legend among game developers, and he has been an inspiration for many of us. “id Software games have been a benchmark of innovation in interactive graphics for decades,” Manuel recalls pointing to Quake II not only as a memorable game but also a milestone in game visuals. However, they all have limitations and often fall deep into the uncanny valley." "Many different techniques have been invented over the years to approximate these material properties. Which, on the receiving end, would no doubt be a lot scarier than coming across a Berserker. As pointed out by NVIDIA, the fact that there weren’t any surfaces that reflected the player the avatar or player model in Quake II only consisted of a hand attached to a weapon. The lack of reflections, simulated or not, is not exactly surprising for a game that came out at a time when films like Con Air, Titanic, and Face/Off were filling up movie theatres. Only ray tracing can produce physically correct reflections and refractions in every situation.” However, they all have limitations and often fall deep into the uncanny valley. “Many different techniques have been invented over the years to approximate these material properties. “Quake II had no complex materials such as metal, water, or glass, because reflections and refractions would have had to be computed in real-time,” Manuel continues. Although lightmaps have been greatly improved since, they remain a fundamental technique that is still used today in almost every game.” Many shadows were also missing or incorrect. Because these ray-tracing calculations could not be performed in real time, much of the lighting in the game was static. “For instance, the first Quake is credited as the first game to store pre-computed diffuse lighting and occlusions into lightmaps. “Quake II was already a pioneer in simulating many lighting effects,” NVIDIA’s Manuel Kraemer adds. I started making some improvements, then everyone got excited, and then things really started cooking.”Ī Technical Marvel - Looking Back at Quake II Originally, our intention was just to analyse and improve performance and fix some image quality issues. “We were not aware of the project before that. “We first heard of Christoph’s Q2VKPT sometime in late January shortly after it was released,” Principal DevTech Engineer Alexey Panteleev and lead programmer on Quake II RTX tells me. Especially when you factor in the age of Quake II. In fact, like the rest of us, the engineering team at NVIDIA were impressed and fascinated by the results. student and former NVIDIA intern Christoph Schied from earlier in the year. The demo was built off the impressive path-tracing mod created by Ph.D. With the new part being that a team of engineers and artists at NVIDIA had gone and changed up all the lighting and other visual effects found in the 1997 classic and replaced them with cutting edge ray-tracing ones. In March, NVIDIA took the stage at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) to showcase a new look at id Software’s seminal shooter Quake II. Marty Stratton, studio head at id Software, expressed excitement about the return of QuakeCon, stating, “QuakeCon is our favorite event of the year, and we can’t wait to finally see our incredible QuakeCon community in-person again, celebrate games, and frag all weekend with thousands of friends.”įans of the Quake franchise and gamers in general are eagerly awaiting the release of the Quake II remaster and the exciting announcements to come from QuakeCon 2023.Powered by the company’s new line of Turing graphics cards, ray-tracing represents a major leap in the visual fidelity and realism found in real-time environments - with the flagship NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti leading the charge. The four-day event will take place at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. QuakeCon 2023 marks the return of the event as an in-person gathering after three years of digital-only events. The new remaster promises enhanced graphics and gameplay improvements. It is important to note that this remaster is different from Quake II RTX, the ray-tracing-enabled version of Quake II releasedNvidia in 2019. This suggests that the Quake II remaster may be one of the first announcements during the event’s opening address. The release coincides with the start of QuakeCon 2023, which will also commence today at the same time. It is rumored to be priced at $9.99 / €9.99 / £7.99, although the official title is still unclear. The game, which will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch, is expected to launch at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST. The highly anticipated Quake II remaster is set to be released today, according to a reliable leaker.
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