HomeFeatures
Portal with RTX is a flawed diamond of a ray traced remasterAnd a promising showing for Nvidia’s RTX Remix mod tools
And a promising showing for Nvidia’s RTX Remix mod tools
If I were a PC graphics bigwig, choosing which aged game to spruce up withray tracingas an elaborate mod tools advert, I wouldn’t have gone for one with as timeless an aesthetic asPortal’s. Maybe that’s why I’m not one –Portal with RTXis a gorgeous return to Aperture Science, a borderline must-play for anyone with a premium GeForce RTX GPU, and a mightily impressive demonstration of the Nvidia RTX Remix tools that built it.
Admittedly, that’s in spite of some shortcomings, including utterly broken performance on even the strongest Radeon RXgraphics cards. Equip yourself with RTX hardware, however, and this free mod is a real Christmas treat.
What’s It Like To Start World Of Warcraft From Scratch?Liam and Ed recently investigated how much time World of Warcraft takes up in your life for the first episode of Inventory Space.Watch on YouTube
What’s It Like To Start World Of Warcraft From Scratch?
If you missed theRTX 40 serieslaunch event at which it was revealed, RTX Remix is essentially a modding platform that makes it possible to add ray tracing and Nvidia DLSS upscaling to certain Direct 8 and DirectX 9 games. It includes tools for replacing textures and models too, so could be thought of as a remastering engine: old game goes in, some buttons are pressed, shiny new ray traced version comes out.
It’s obviously more complicated than that, but in the hands of talented modders, RTX Remix could be a very powerful collection of tools indeed. And to show what’s possible, Nvidia’s in-house Lightspeed Studios (who also madeQuake II RTX) have wielded them to create Portal with RTX.
It rocks. Not only is the whole game now lit and shadowed with path tracing, the most complex and visually complete subset of ray tracing that’s currently technically possible, but Lightspeed Studios have overhauled textures and models throughout. The result is a remaster that’s not far off looking like a shot-for-shot remake, with effects that actually serve the game rather than acting as technoswagger for its own sake. White lights from the test chambers' observation rooms are brighter and harsher, heightening the lab rat anti-fantasy. Flying energy orbs gain a dazzling glow, emphasising their electric lethality. Even the redesigned wall and floor textures have more of a laboratory-appropriate sterility to them, without being so pristine as to undermine Aperture’s figurative and literal grossness.
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
RTX Remix isn’t available to everyone yet, but in the right hands it’s clearly dripping with potential for other impressive visual mods. Source Engine-focused YouTuberRichter Overtimehas already piggybacked on Portal with RTX to get a glimpse of a ray traced Ravenholm inHalf-Life 2, and provided modders don’t run roughshod over the art direction of originals, it’s tempting to imagine a library of remastered classics that don’t involve a publisher charging you £50 for entry.
Remember though, this is ultimately an Nvidia joint, and as brilliant as it is, Portal with RTX does have the slight whiff of trying to sell graphics cards as much as it is RTX Remix. For one thing, your only hope of truly high framerates is the latest RTX 40 series. With anRTX 4080, the cheapest of which are about £1,250, I could leave the ray tracing settings on Ultra mode while staying above 60fps at 4K and 120fps at 1440p – but that was only withDLSS 3on its Performance setting, plus the AI frame generation feature switched on.
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
Sadly, there’s no saving performance on AMD cards. Even on the brand-newRadeon RX 7900 XT, currently AMD’s second most powerful gaming GPU, Portal with RTX struggled to break 20fps at 1440p. The lack of a compatible upscaler is the least of its problems, too: in the footage below, you can see not only my rising bewilderment, but also how aliasing gets almost comically out of control and portals fail to render their exits.
Best case scenario, this is an issue specific to Portal with RTX, and while there’s no way in hell future RTX Remix mods will support FSR, they might still be able to reach 45fps on a high-end AMD GPU without reality breaking down. With a harder head, I’m worried that Remix mods will simply not work on Radeon hardware as a matter of course. That would make economic sense for Nvidia, I’m sure, but wouldn’t exactly be in the spirit of PC gaming. And that’s something rarely said about, y’know,mod tools.
1of2CaptionAttribution
1of2
1of2
1of2
CaptionAttribution
CaptionAttribution
Caption
Attribution
All that said, if you can play Portal with RTX, I still think it’s too good to pass up. It’s a visually sumptuous (yet respectful) redux of one of the best games ever made, costs nothing when you already own the original, and is easily installed throughSteam. Just resist the urge to splash out on anRTX 4090when performance takes a dip.
