RTX wash. It’s a term that refers to old PC games with glossy ray tracing effects. It certainly makes for a decent tech demo, but if you’re like me, you might wonder if there are other benefits.
For Nvidia, it’s clear why the company invested in these games. After all, owning the world’s most powerful GPU isn’t all that exciting without a game that can take advantage of it. RTX4090 I am facing that situation.
But as we quickly discovered, these RTX-washed games probably haven’t made things as good as Nvidia thinks.
shiny fresh coat
At that time Recent GTC Showcase, Nvidia showcased its new RTX 4090 GPU with a few games and demos.These include future Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode that takes ray tracing to previously impossible levels.can’t play Racer RTX demo; and Portal RTXversions of Portal Redone with Nvidia’s new RTX Remix modding tools.
They all featured dynamic lighting and many glossy surfaces. If you’re looking to push a new ray-tracing-centric GPU, that’s all well and good.revamped cyber punk, At the very least, it might give first-time players a new way to enjoy Night City, but Portal RTX It’s a far worse retcon.
original Portal It may be relatively old at this point, but it still has a unique look and feel. By today’s standards, it’s dirty, dirty, and even a little low-poly.It gives it a real charm and many Portal pointed out by fanswhose look and feel is completely lost in highly reflective hallways Portal RTX.
The atmosphere is Portal Tradition too. “What is this place?” you ask yourself when you first step into the test chamber. It’s clearly in disrepair, and has been without human intervention for a very long time, as revealed over the course of the game. In contrast, Portal RTX Achieving such a state of reflective cleanliness would have required GLaDOS to scrub and polish floors daily.
Needless to say, the walls supporting the test chamber portal should be partially made of moon rock.of Portal RTXgiven a new texture, making it look like a kind of ceramic. Portal RTX Tradition breaking.
But for Nvidia, it doesn’t really matter. Portal RTX It is not an attempt to create a definitive version of PortalThis is Nvidia’s attempt to create a game so demanding that it requires an RTX 4090 to play as intended. But it can’t be played as the original developer intended. Portal RTX is not P.oral Already. This is Nvidia’s attempt to build a “can it be done”. crisis?” You can gain experience by generating tech demos from the corpses of great games.
As far as I’m concerned, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth—going with the moths in my purse.
Developer Intentions and Fan Expectations
Of course, this is nothing new. Added RTX Ray Tracing Quake II, makes the game look much more modern and “beautiful” than ever before.to many people Quake II For fans, however, this significantly changes the look and feel of the game, losing its original charm.
the same can be said Minecraft RTX, ironically one of the most demanding RTX Ray Tracing enabled games.Part of minecraft It was incredibly accessible from a hardware point of view, and the low-res world was understandable and familiar, resulting in incredible success. It’s an aesthetic that has proven to be very successful, and mods have existed since the game’s inception to alter or improve its appearance, Portal RTX It does more than that by changing the very atmosphere of the game.
None of this matters in the sense that the original games are lost over time, but Nvidia is RTX-washing these older games to create something. everything That next-generation graphics card can sink teeth. Taking on some of our most beloved childhood memories, we hope that the nostalgic drips and a fresh coat of Captain Phasma’s suit paint will be enough to shake up gamers who purchase something that’s otherwise pretty redundant. I’m here.
Realism isn’t always better
Ray tracing in games can look beautiful, but I won’t argue with that.but it is not always visible Better. take Implemented in a bullshit way hitman 3The lighting there looks more realistic, but often loses the cinematic feel of the original game’s baked-in lighting. .
it’s the same way Lord of the Ring How fans felt when they first saw high frame rates Hobbit movie. What was supposed to make them look and feel more realistic just made them look like soap operas. .
Nvidia is doing the same thing, charging far more for “privileges” than it does for movie tickets.
Not only will you have to shell out at least $900 for an RTX 4000 graphics card, you’ll lose much of your original graphics card. Portal very. Along with the coldness of the facilities that are no longer used, Portal RTX It also sacrifices some of the little lighting cues that subtly tell you where to place the portal. Realistic Ray tracing. Also gone is the checkered floor texture that implied the required high speed operation. A new (reflective) glass texture on the floor buttons makes them nearly invisible in dark scenes, hindering puzzle progress.
Is it worth sacrificing all of that for a game that has a more photorealistic look at first glance? For fans of the original game, it’s a resounding no.
However Portal RTX It’s not a showcase to convince anyone, but Portal fan or not.
Leave the remixes to the modders
It’s quite possible that Nvidia built Portal RTX We tested the RTX Remix tool and thought it was kinda cool so we decided to release it. That’s after considering all the caveats above. RTX Remix as a modding tool is very exciting and modders who respect the original game design choices will do some great work to reinvent and revitalize some of the classics over the next few years. I guess.
However No flagship game to showcase its featuressuggested by Nvidia Portal RTX One of the main reasons to buy the RTX 4090, as an indicator of just how good the next-gen graphics card will be, made it through vague performance charts.
Considering our conclusions, RTX 4090 is a huge waste of moneyI don’t think it was successful.
But ray tracing still has a lot of potential. Games made with ray tracing in mind look really good.upcoming games like Plague Story: Requiem It would have been a good showcase of what the RTX 4000 card could do. stalker 2 I will come next year. It has fancy ray-traced lighting. It’s probably worth upgrading to an RTX 4000 GPU. It may have been a good show.
but instead we got Portal RTXand versions of cyber punk Even modern hardware can’t run it unless DLSS creates frames. It’s a poor show and really highlights Nvidia’s odd position of creating hardware to add something to games that most people haven’t yet sold. Apparently, that’s at least partly because Nvidia hasn’t figured out how to market it yet.
Portal RTX It looks great, but Portal is not. Mine Craft RTX looks gorgeous, but Minecraft shouldn’t look that way either.playable please Racer RTXUntil some real new games come out, the RTX 4090 will continue to feel like a waste of power.
Editor’s pick
