NVIDIA ridicules remastered, and on consoles we pay them for two improvements

NVIDIA ridicules remastered

Ah le remastered, always a rather discussed and criticized topic; updates of titles sold at full price, with no special additional content and sometimes superficial remastering work. How many times has it happened to us to blame the market for this choice? How many times have we thought: wouldn't it be better to go forward instead of backwards? All questions absolutely justified by a model now destined to disappear.

For some years, Xbox has been working hard to allow a preservation of video games without resorting to remastering and reselling of games, introducing Boost FPS, Auto-HDR, resolution increased and backward compatibility. A work that continues to evolve and in which the Microsoft Gaming team strongly believes.

Despite this, however, there are still those who invest numerous resources to propose rather trivial reinterpretations with mere increases in resolution and performance, perhaps placing the job even at 50-60-70 euros. Then there are those who worked to rebuild the game from the base (remake); just think of Resident Evil 2, Final Fantasy VII Remake, The Last of Us Part I or Demon's Souls, a different and more appreciable decision, given that in some cases we got to see a different experience from different points of view.| ); }

How does RTX Remix work?

RTX Remix is ​​able to capture textures, lighting, cameras and geometries of any video game compatible with DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 . This information is loaded into a Runtime called RTX Remix Runtime which interprets everything in distinct assets and reassembles them in an identical scene, after which RTX Remix converts all the assets and scenes in the 3D framework, Universal Scene Description (USD), which constitutes the basis of the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for creating and managing custom 3D pipelines.


Now, to introduce ray tracing into a game is It is necessary that every texture and surface be designed with PBR rendering materials, this in order for them to interact naturally with ray-traced light. An example that NVIDIA makes is trivially about glass, which reflects with clear details, while a laminate floor has coarser reflections. The stone, on the other hand, while not offering visible reflections, is able to bounce the light and thus also act on the game world. The problem is that classic games consist of simple color textures that have none of these properties.




So, in order to introduce ray tracing, modders have to work by reconstructing every single asset by hand and working with new geometric details. There is no point in specifying how long such a thing may take.

RTX Remix aims to simplify and speed up the remastering process by exploiting artificial intelligence. AI Super Resolution increases the resolution of textures by 4 times, transforming them into 4K resolution resources. In addition to this, AI Physically Based Masterials analyzes the game environment and adds PBR properties to all textures taken as a reference.

Obviously the improvements of the textures and models are only part of the upgrade offered by RTX Remix. Titles such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind were developed with classic lighting techniques, far removed from modern global illumination. NVIDIA's software allows you to convert traditional lights into realistic lights, then take advantage of ray-tracing to give a new imprint to the scene, also introducing soft shadows, ambient occlusion and reflections. In short, a real visual show and all practicable in a practically automatic way, where a modder can even create dynamic lights and introduce the volume to make the scene more engaging. Oh, I forgot, all practically at no cost.

If you want to know more, I leave you the link that leads to the official NVIDIA page, which collects a bit of what I have summarized in the previous lines, as well as to a Portal video that I'm sure will blow your mind.

Having said that, do we agree that this software could really put an end to the ancient and terrifying concept of “remastered”? Now thought only to extract money from the consumer with the minimum labor union?

Think of such a tool in the hands of modders what it could generate, what incredible classic titles we will finally be able to replay, perhaps without spending practically anything.

The point is, however, that we will almost certainly see all this only on PC, while console players (PlayStation and Switch above all, who have been living behind a rather preponderant remastered system for years) will be forced, if nothing changes. , to still pay handsomely for the classic three enhancements that a PC gamer can normally dispose of for free. Sometimes I think: why do I have to pay 10 euros to make the next-gen switch between two versions of God of War or Horizon? Why on Xbox a Gears 5, a Halo Infinite or a Forza Horizon 5 automatically updates depending on the console and elsewhere do I have to spend money? Why is it enough for me to change settings on PC and that's it?

From this point of view, NVIDIA has certainly ridiculed the remastered and maybe even those who persist in making a living with this "trick" and why not, maybe even those who spend money to replay the same title with the same textures and an upgrade that should normally be free will make you think.

Who knows, maybe now we will start to wake up.