Support NeoGAF

[Buggy Loop]

The demo doesn't have controller support.

That's a problem with native Half Life 2. I think you have to go to mouse window and check activate gamepad. If not that, disabled Steam input in steam settings and otherwise well.. google. RTX Remix should have nothing to do with input.

But papi, what is you doing on PC playing an FPS classic with a controller?

And the UI is tiny, did they even bother to do some testing for this? Man what a joke

Which one? The Half Life setting menu?

That's just how old the game is. The anniversary version does not work with RTX remix as they were using more recent versions of directX for UI.

This is again a native problem with Half Life 2. They never thought peoples would play 4K in 2004. Same thing happened with Portal RTX.

Alt-X RTX menu should be ok

Also its a demo from a team of modders and its free. Are peoples expecting a remake that would be put on a store for money?

 

[RafterXL]

It's a lot of effort for subpar results, of course people don't "understand" ray tracing.

No, it's actually less effort for more accurate results. That's the entire reason why it's the end game for lighting in video games.

 

[Gonzito]

That's a problem with native Half Life 2. I think you have to go to mouse window and check activate gamepad. If not that, disabled Steam input in steam settings and otherwise well.. google. RTX Remix should have nothing to do with input.

But papi, what is you doing on PC playing an FPS classic with a controller?



Which one? The Half Life setting menu?

That's just how old the game is. The anniversary version does not work with RTX remix as they were using more recent versions of directX for UI.

This is again a native problem with Half Life 2. They never thought peoples would play 4K in 2004. Same thing happened with Portal RTX.

Alt-X RTX menu should be ok

Also its a demo from a team of modders and its free. Are peoples expecting a remake that would be put on a store for money?

I will take a look at all that information, but I think if they are making a modern version they should at least bother to make this more accessible. Half Life Black Mesa has good controller support and the UI scales better for example. I didnt know this was going to be free though, I thought the final game would be sold so that explains it I guess.

As for playing on pc with a controller, I am always playing in the sofa when using the pc so playing with a controller is a must for me Many people do this nowadays, exclusive keyboard and mouse only is a thing from the past

 

[Chiggs]

83 gigs?!

 

[Schmendrick]

Alan Wake II already showed what PT can do and Ninja Theory already showed that you can do without and still have one of the best looking games ever made people can actually play without upscaling and with it with good performance.

Utter nonsense.....
HB2 is 100% static walking sim with a deliberately downsized FOV and Alan Wake 2 runs in the ~25 fps range when you try to to run it maxed out with PT on a 5090 without upscaling.....get your facts straight. HL2 RTX goes a step further with its PT and is also riding/hijacking an old API while doing it, and the performance is perfectly in line with that.

I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying that the time is not even close to being right for release of such tech demos. Like, why should I care even if for years to come there won't be hardware capable to offer adequate performance at 4K at least? Does it look good? Yes? Why should I care at this point in time? I'm not DF to jerk off on every piece of light, texture or model for 1,5 hours.

The demo is out right now and people are playing this on 4060 level cards. That´s what scalability means.
Who are you even talking to when you ramble about people supposedly not being able to play this tech showcase? Why arbitrarily pointing to 4k as if we`d see that resolution often in demanding AAA games, especially not native?
There is literally no basis to your nagging except "I don`t like it for...reasons"
You personally don`t care and that`s absolutely fine, but don`t go pretending that this should somehow go for everyone else, too, especially not when you have zero objective arguments.

 

[Mithos]

The demo doesn't have controller support.

Controller worked for me.


5700x3D, 32GB RAM, RTX 4070 Ti Super.

1080p, DLSS 4 Transformer (Quality), Ultra Preset : 50-80fps
same but with framegen: 90-160fps (seen so far)

 

[FireFly]

They'll have the worst experience ever, unlike those who just going to wait for the right time in 2035-2040. Moreover, there's nothing new there except visuals unlike recent remakes of RE and this year's SH2. It's good that it's free at least.

From the article:

"What's interesting here is that DLSS 4 Performance Mode provides a BETTER image at 1080p. This is thanks to the Transformer Model. This is the first time I've seen DLSS 4 perform THAT well in such a low resolution."

But let's ignore the Steam survey results indicating that the vast majority of PC gamers use 1080p and 1440p screens.

 

[mrMUR_96]

So 27 fps on a 5090, that ain't even a high enough base frame rate for frame gen. Maybe with a 7090 you can have decent experience

That's without DLSS at all, so it's running at native 4k. Turning on DLSS would increase framerate before engaging frame generation.

 

[kutthoat5150]

Controller worked for me.


5700x3D, 32GB RAM, RTX 4070 Ti Super.

1080p, DLSS 4 Transformer (Quality), Ultra Preset : 50-80fps
same but with framegen: 90-160fps (seen so far)

How does the aiming and movement feel? Was planning on loading this up over the weekend on a 77inch OLED with a controller

 

[MikeM]

Tried with my 9070xt. Looks like soup in playable framerates lol

 

[Mithos]

How does the aiming and movement feel? Was planning on loading this up over the weekend on a 77inch OLED with a controller

As someone who pretty much never have played an FPS with keyb/mouse***, it works fine "for me". So I couldn't really tell if it good or bad.


*** In more recent times, sure I used keyb/mouse in the Doom/Quake release era, but now days I use a game controller.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I will take a look at all that information, but I think if they are making a modern version they should at least bother to make this more accessible. Half Life Black Mesa has good controller support and the UI scales better for example. I didnt know this was going to be free though, I thought the final game would be sold so that explains it I guess.

As for playing on pc with a controller, I am always playing in the sofa when using the pc so playing with a controller is a must for me Many people do this nowadays, exclusive keyboard and mouse only is a thing from the past

Ok, fine with sofa comment, that's legit a way of playing. Check my advice on controller setup, otherwise yea... might wait on more debugging to be found online on it which should come soon enough the more peoples play. Even a google search and it seems the original half life 2 has those comments too until the more modern version for 20th anniversary.

RTX remix literally hijacks the ~2004 DX8-DX9 version to inject all you see, so you end up also with a lot of the same problems that devs didn't think about for the time such as UI scaling. And yea, it'll always remain free as its a mod project. Check out Portal RTX too if you haven't.

It also runs worse than a full remake project that would run on new code like say Black Mesa did, as like I said above, this is hijacking the API pipeline to rewrite on the fly the whole game that is running 2004 DX9 code in the background. It shouldn't even exist as a tech because its fucking wild.

This image shows how much it does once it intercepts the API call to GPU

Thus it will always be very limited to fixed function pipeline games for one and also never perform like a brand new remake with brand new code. I don't even understand how they do the revamp in any playable framerate.

The peoples using Portal RTX or this game for path tracing performance dogpiling don't understand how fucking insane the project is to begin with. RTX Remix intercepting the game runtime to change old CPU coding to newer, API conversion to Vulkan, revamp it with the textures, shaders and path tracing is summarized like Tom Cruise hijacking a flying plane from outside

 

[Buggy Loop]

Tried with my 9070xt. Looks like soup in playable framerates lol

I thought you bought a 5070 Ti ?

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Something is wrong. I get 120fp at 1440p DLSSQuality, but image quality doesnt look very good. I tried turning off dynamic resolution, but DLSS image still looked ultra soft (like a paint). I turned off DLSS completely and finally got a sharp image, but the shimmering and PT noise was unacceptable.

Edit - I found the problem. Ray reconstruction turns everything into a blurry mess, not DLSS quality.


DLSS Quality - blurry / paint like image quality

Without DLSS, good sharpness, but insane amount of noise.

 

[Miles708]

No, it's actually less effort for more accurate results. That's the entire reason why it's the end game for lighting in video games.

Understandable. Can't wait to see it being both performant and artistic.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

Original has better atmosphere.

Here's the thing with these RTX updates. Sure the lighting is "more realistic" but the levels were design for older lighting techniques so that's why everything looks weird

 

[Spukc]

This looks like fucking garbage..
Played for 30 minutes and deleted it.

If this is how people think good graphics look they can fuck off.

This looks like a student project of someone who has no fucking clue

 

[TrebleShot]

Unimpressed

 

[Buggy Loop]

 

[KyoZz]

Something is wrong. I get 120fp at 1440p DLSSQuality, but image quality doesnt look very good. I tried turning off dynamic resolution, but DLSS image still looked ultra soft (like a paint). I turned off DLSS completely and finally got a sharp image, but the shimmering and PT noise was unacceptable.

Edit - I found the problem. Ray reconstruction turns everything into a blurry mess, not DLSS quality.


DLSS Quality - blurry / paint like image quality

Without DLSS, good sharpness, but insane amount of noise.

Yep something is definitely wrong. Here is mine for comparaison with some before/after (ultra everything/DLSS quality) and granted it's a bit blurrier than the native screenshot since I had to use imgur

Spoiler

 

[intheinbetween]

Welp, it's crashing on my rig (RTX 5090), probably because of my display settings @ 32:10

 

[MikeM]

I thought you bought a 5070 Ti ?

Returned it. Had issues with picture color and brightness even after adjusting HDMI settings to RGB 10bit etc. Also wasn't a fan of the software forcing optimizations in order to keep HDR on.

 

[yamaci17]

my impressions with 3070

impressed so far. similar or a bit better performance than portal rtx which I really liked to play already

getting around 36-45 FPS with 1080p dlss balanced transformer. 90% of the game looks great, foliage looks a bit bad but that's something I can live with
latency around 45-60 ms which is MUCH lower than 60 fps vsync console games, as a result incredibly responsive
no VRAM problems so far, but didn't try 1440p output. so far I'm pleased with 1080p dlss in this game with transformer aside from foliage

I can play with my Dualshock as well but its the first time I've even tried half life with gamepad. I decided to share some gameplay as well but be kind as I don't often play FPS games with a gamepad



of course these graphics has nothing to do with actual half life 2, its ambience is unrivalled. no matter what, this won't stop me from appreciating what path tracing is doing here. I just look at it as a separate thing (think of minecraft shaders that completely change the look of the game). I will enjoy another run with RTX regardless, it's just a fun new perspective to me

Seems to run noticeably better than Portal RTX for me! Not sure why - maybe they've improved their performance penalties of the Remix suite? Mostly around 70-80fps at 1440p DLSS Performance (so about 736p internal the way they do this) using the Transformer model of DLSS, which is the only way to make this low resolution look great on a 1440p monitor. I WAS able to get it to drop under 60fps in two places in Ravenholm though, even with that aggressive DLSS. Got down to the low 50s in fact in one place. That would be the fire hallway before the electric fence courtyard, when all fire effects were lit up and it was full of zombies.

Also there might be a VRAM memory leak? My 16 GB 4060 TI would load the level at around 7GB of usage but would slowly end up over 13GB before getting to the next loading screen just 15 minutes later or so.

I'm very impressed with the quality of the path tracing and the artistry they put into the revamped models and assets. Staggeringly beautiful and I hope the rest of the game will have just as much attention put into it.

i don't think there are any leaks, rtx remix automatically adjusts texture quality based on your available VRAM. I've noticed that it is configured to use 50% of your total VRAM as texture budget/cache. considering I didn't see any PS3-like textures so far, it is doing a great job. you may probably get higher quality textures with much better 1% lows so there's that at least but that would depend on how much VRAM the game actually needs at a given setting

 

[Buggy Loop]

Tried it also 10 mins or so during lunch break.

Performs surprisingly well on 3080 Ti and 3440x1440.

Don't forget to alt-X to access more settings and you can change ray reconstruction from CNN to transformer model. There's a hit on performance but imo worth it.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Recommended settings

Damn, I wish more games did that.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Also the brightness setting in the ALT-X menu is exposure. So without lowering the rest of UI or anything the like, you can really change the atmosphere.

50%

0%

And again, exhaustive list of options when you go into dev mode and you can basically tweak parameter by parameter.

 

[yamaci17]

Also the brightness setting in the ALT-X menu is exposure. So without lowering the rest of UI or anything the like, you can really change the atmosphere.

50%


0%


And again, exhaustive list of options when you go into dev mode and you can basically tweak parameter by parameter.

to be fair I will just settle on 1080p dlss quality transformer at medium preset (it gets me 30+ frames). reflex makes the game incredibly responsive. these are games I used to play at 60 FPS with vsync on a 60 hz screen lol. compared to that, 30-40 FPS with reflex on a VRR screen feels much more responsive somehow

and frametimes are incredibly smooth and stable. I think recommendations are to get close to 60 which is fair. I'm glad I can enjoy any game at 30+ FPS in these situations

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

In the first comparison, ray reconstruction helped to bring out details on the bricks, but unfortunately RR also applies an ugly excessive contrast sharpening and I hate that oversharpened look. Ray reconstruction does improve the frame rate though.

1440p DLSSQ (with forced transformer J preset) + FGx2

In the second comparison, the ray reconstruction blurred fine details on the textures.


1440p DLSS Quality

The DLSS4 (transformer) improved image quality, but now Nvidia wants us to blur everything again with ray reconstruction .

Frame delivery (with or without FG) in Half Life 2 RTX is another problem. The game starts up fine and the frame delivery looks perfect, but as I continued to play the game I started to see judder (motion wasnt smooth even though the framerate was good).

 

[SnapShot]

Okay but like, why is it 82GBs for just a demo???

 

[apple_of_enlightenment]

In a 2004 game that was tech limited for its time, sure. Half Life 2 was of course not with physically based rendering (PBR) phase which came more in ~2013 and this means texture have no material properties for specular highlight, material roughness, etc.

Or baked lighting which as seen here, doesn't even light up the gun right under a light

For the times its brighter because there's an actual dynamic light source and no longer baked, its also darker when it makes sense and doesn't have that weird carboard look lighting when there's not even a light source nearby that would give this effect even in the original. The "floaty/gamey" lighting of old where everything seems evenly lit.

So... brighter then?

 

[Ivan]

This looks like shit and I'm glad...

I hate when those amateurs ruin legendary games like this just to make a fucking benchmark for Jensen. They can fuck right off...

 

[Schmendrick]

This looks like shit and I'm glad...

I hate when those amateurs ruin legendary games like this just to make a fucking benchmark for Jensen. They can fuck right off...

Insert *are you stupid or something?* Gif
....

 

[Buggy Loop]

This looks like shit and I'm glad...

Naw

This looks a thousand times more respectful of the source material than Black Mesa did.

I hate when those amateurs ruin legendary games like this just to make a fucking benchmark for Jensen. They can fuck right off...

All the assets are stellars. OMG itS TOO BrIgHt. Yea that can be adjusted. Its not released, its on-going development. Its a demo.

Being so fucking melodramatic about a free MOD is something else. This isn't a film restoration. You're not chasing a 1920s something movie film roll to preserve. This does not ruin anything, the original is still one click away from installing on your HDD and enjoy that, doing fuck all. Don't shit on peoples pouring hundreds of hours into a project on their own free time for no money compensation. What a fucking asshole.

You can fuck right off

 

[Ivan]

Well you two can fuck off too with that attitude...

 

[VeganElduderino]

looks fucking great ! ran great on 4070ti , stutters of course and than crashed once I tried taking a screenshot!

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I tried this on my 3090

It's....playable in 4K resolution when I set it to DLSS Ultra Performance. But I can run it with High preset and Transformer model this way. I was getting framerates in the 40's to 50's range. For me this was playable, I know some of you people with 5090's would take a piss on me from a great height with this kind of framerate and resolution but I was fine with it, I'm pretty sure when I played the OG Half-Life 2 back in 2004 my framerate was worse than that

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Sampler feedback on vs off in Half Life 2 RTX.

Sampler feedback streaming intelligently loads and evicts data on demand in order to reduce memory consumption.

 

[RafterXL]

Returned it. Had issues with picture color and brightness even after adjusting HDMI settings to RGB 10bit etc. Also wasn't a fan of the software forcing optimizations in order to keep HDR on.

I've seen you post this a couple of time and it literally isn't a thing. I don't use NVidias optimization software, and never have, and I use HDR. There is no link between the two.

 

[Loope]

Fuck, i don't want to go back to Ravenholm.

But seems like i have to...

 

[MikeM]

I've seen you post this a couple of time and it literally isn't a thing. I don't use NVidias optimization software, and never have, and I use HDR. There is no link between the two.

Disable Game Optimizations

Disable Game Optimizations

www.nvidia.com

"HDR NOTE: In order to run a game in HDR mode, the game must be run with optimized settings enabled. The user can still adjust game settings once streaming has begun."

 

[RafterXL]

Disable Game Optimizations

Disable Game Optimizations

www.nvidia.com

"HDR NOTE: In order to run a game in HDR mode, the game must be run with optimized settings enabled. The user can still adjust game settings once streaming has begun."

This is Gamestream, not your video card. So let me get this straight, you hated this feature of a Nvidia streaming service so badly that you returned the card about bought one that doesn't even offer this service at all?

 

[yamaci17]

yup incredible stuff

Imgsli

this will eventually be implemented to AAA games probably

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Fuck, i don't want to go back to Ravenholm.

But seems like i have to...

Ravenholm is quietly one of the best horror levels in any FPS game ever

People know Half-Life for the sci-fi but forget about Ravenholm

 

[MikeM]

This is Gamestream, not your video card. So let me get this straight, you hated this feature of a Nvidia streaming service so badly that you returned the card about bought one that doesn't even offer this service at all?

I didn't use the streaming service. I thought that disabled the optimizer. Shit… seems I misunderstood it. I just wanted optimizer to stop changing my game settings. Ugh…

 

[Mithos]

New Nvidia drivers 572.83, gives a "small" performance boost.


1080p, DLSS 4 Transformer (Quality), Ultra Preset : 50-80fps -> 60-90fps
have not tested how much fps gets boosted with framegen yet.

Also, today controller do not work in the game for some reason...

Edit:
Disabling Steam Input on the game, and then starting the game through BIG-Picture Mode made the game controller working again.

 

[RafterXL]

I didn't use the streaming service. I thought that disabled the optimizer. Shit… seems I misunderstood it. I just wanted optimizer to stop changing my game settings. Ugh…

Oh, shit. Fair enough, an honest mistake. I was wondering because I hate that optimizer and never had this issue.

 

[SnapShot]

yup incredible stuff

Imgsli

this will eventually be implemented to AAA games probably

Older AAA games sure, new ones don't need it because they come with this stuff built into them

 

[rodrigolfp]

This looks like shit and I'm glad...

 

[Loope]

Ravenholm is quietly one of the best horror levels in any FPS game ever

People know Half-Life for the sci-fi but forget about Ravenholm

For sure. I don't like horror games or movies, i love half life 2. I must have finished it 8 times or something like that.

Ravenholm always left me uneasy.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

HL2 RTX has extremely detailed textures, but it doesn't matter because poor image quality blurs the fine details on the textures and they look like crap anyway. I wish HL2 RTX assets would be ported to normal Half Life 2. People would be blown away with textures quality, because original game has razor sharp image quality (MSAA) and can show such incredible amount of detail.