As part of its GDC 2025 announcements, NVIDIA has confirmed that a free Half-Life 2 RTX demo will launch on March 18. This demo will allow players to experience about two hours of gameplay, showcasing the work done by Orbifold Studios. Full ray tracing and reworked assets, better particles, and modernized animations can be found in the Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt levels. Now, in addition to the demo, NVIDIA has formally launched the RTX Remix remastering suite, after more than a year in Open Beta.
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Half-Life 2 RTX Demo Arrives March 18 Alongside RTX Remix’s Official Release and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation
The full release includes new options for DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation as well as RTX Neural Radiance Cache, RTX Skin, and RTX Volumetrics that are all built-in to Half-Life 2 RTX demo. NVIDIA states the performance benefits are large, with frame rates up to 2.4x compared to the Open Beta iteration, which supported only DLSS 3.5 Frame Generation. These improvements are all thanks to DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation and RTX Radiance Cache in general, alongside runtime optimizations and better texture streaming.
NVIDIA also explains how RTX Skin and RTX Volumetrics improve character models and environmental effects in the demo. RTX Remix users will also see a new Character Replacement feature that simplifies the remastering of older game assets. Using RTX Remix, users can remap skeletons after modifying them in Blender and produce full-fledged, remastered assets. The firm announced 150 games that work with RTX Remix, including Left 4 Dead 2 and the Painkiller Remixed mod.
More than 350 mod projects are in the works with the help of over 30,000 modders. NVIDIA also revealed PBRFusion 3, a tool to help remaster materials for Physically Based Rendering (PBR). This new version improves texture upscaling, normal maps, and seamless map generation. Lastly, NVIDIA confirmed that over 100 games and applications now support DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, with upcoming titles such as Lost Soul Aside, Mecha BREAK, Phantom Blade Zero, Stellar Blade, Tides of Annihilation, and Wild Assault set to feature the technology.
FAQs
When will the Half-Life 2 RTX demo be available?
The demo launches on March 18, 2025.
What new features does RTX Remix include?
It adds DLSS 4, RTX Skin, RTX Volumetrics, and more.
