Classic FPS Unreal gets the Nvidia RTX Remix treatment

I wasn’t wrong when I said that the release of Nvidia’s RTX Remix toolkit would see retro games be given a bit of a spin shine. In this latest example, a modder has taken the original Unreal and injected it with some path tracing and other visual tweaks.

The below video was spotted by DSO Gaming, and shows the 1998 Epic Games release has been given a bit of boost using RTX technology. We see the first level of the classic FPS, as the player shows off the much brighter and bolder colored lighting. Pew pew, indeed.

It should be noted that this is a work in progress, and it’s still being tinkered with. As a result, you can see a couple of graphical glitches, particularly in the new “shiny” gun. The game was loaded into the Unreal Tournament engine.

This is what first-person shooters used to be like, kids

It would be forgivable for someone unfamiliar with the game to not be able to see what exactly has changed. Fortunately, in response to someone on Twitter, the person behind the mod, Jacob Freeman, uploaded two side-by-side screenshots, which show Unreal with RTX on and off.

It is possible to see a difference, even if it looks like they’ve just turned the brightness up a bit. As I said, this is still being worked on, so no doubt we’ll see further progress and improvements.

For those who weren’t around back then, Unreal was praised for its jump in FPS visuals, utilizing Epic’s new engine that was named after the game. However, it would soon be left behind when Half-Life came out just a few months later. Valve’s maiden release essentially stole the spotlight with its genre-shifting development techniques and storytelling methods. Unreal didn’t stand much of a chance.