Half-Life is a series of games developed and published by Valve, introduced in 1998.
As the first of its kind that combines first-person shooter (FPS) with puzzles and immersive storytelling, as well as innovative sequences, its popularity inspired way the creations of future FPS games, and gathered way too many community-developed mods and expansion packs, as well as a notable sequel, Half-Life 2, and the more recent Half-Life: Alyx, which makes extensive use of virtual reality.
Nvidia is a GPU manufacturer, and there is no better way for it to market a new technology than piggyback Half-Life, which has long been considered one of the best FPS game ever made.
The original Half-Life was way ahead of its time, and its development was too ambitious for Valve, which was only 2 years old at the time.
Two decades later, technology has advanced so far that Half-Life's graphic is considered a relic.
Nvidia is changing this, by announcing a remaster of Half-Life 2, which utilizes full ray-tracing.
In 3D computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for modeling, which enhances light transport for use in a wide variety of rendering algorithms for generating digital images.
The technology was originally meant for enhancing still computer-generated images, but after hardware became more powerful, the technology is also making way to real-time applications, like video games, where speed is critical in rendering each frame.
By using ray tracing on the original Half-Life 2 game, Nvidia manages to significantly improve the graphics of the game by adding reflection, refraction, soft shadows, scattering, depth of field, motion blur, caustics, ambient occlusion, dispersion phenomena, and more.
While Nvidia's version of Half-Life 2 is not an official release, the company received help from a myriad Half-Life 2 mod teams, including those that made Half-Life 2: VR, united under the studio called Orbifold Studios.
Half-Life 2 RTX is built on top of Nvidia Omniverse, and as what Nvidia calls it, "is early in development," a blog post by Nvidia said.
Through its "latest version," Nvidia said, Orbifold is "rebuilding materials with Physically Based Rendering (PBR) properties, adding extra geometric detail via Valve’s Hammer editor, and leveraging NVIDIA technologies including full ray-tracing, DLSS 3, Reflex, and RTX IO to deliver a fantastic experience for GeForce RTX gamers."
On top of the ray tracing enhancement, the reconstructed game artifacts have been swapped with textures that have 8X the pixels.
The Mark IV HEV Suit, for example, features 20X the geometric detail of the original game, allowing the game to showcase fabric weavings around the joints of the suit, and the interplay of plastics and metals that compose the chest, leg, and arm pieces.
And for fans, the best thing about this is that, the game is planned to be released for free.
In a trailer showcasing the improved graphics, Nvidia indeed showed how far graphics have advanced in just two decades.
The first Half-Life game follows the main protagonist, Gordon Freeman, a silent bespectacled white man, who graduated from MIT with a Ph.D degree in theoretical physics.
Freeman was an employee at the Black Mesa Research Facility, before an incident created a "resonance cascade" that severely damages the facility and opens a portal to another dimension, Xen.
Surviving scientists urge Gordon to head to the surface, where he defends himself against hostile Xen creatures. On top of that, Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU), a special unit, was sent to cover up the incident by killing all of the aliens and any Black Mesa personnel they can find.
With only himself and a small number of Black Mesa survivors, Gordon must find a way to close the portal, in order to end the interdimensional invasion.
In Half-Life 2, Freeman who survived the alien invasion, was revived after being placed in a stasis.
In a world now occupied by aliens, Gordon must join forces with the Resistance, and begin his journey across the dystopian landscape of City 17.
Both the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are critically acclaimed games, considered the greatest first-person shooters of all time.
They were miles ahead of their immediate competition, that two decades after being released, the instant classic games were still some of the best of their kind.
To show the dedication for this remaster, a website called HL2RTX.com has been set up.
