NVIDIA RTX-Remix 0.1 Released For Adding Path Tracing To Classic Games

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA RTX-Remix 0.1 Released For Adding Path Tracing To Classic Games

In addition to releasing the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card today (unfortunately, no launch day Linux review, still waiting on hardware...), NVIDIA has released as open-source the RTX Remix software for helping to add path tracing support to classic games...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-RTX-Remix-0.1

[Arthus]

Can we talk about the fact that Nvidia - a company that isn't really well known for supporting and publishing OSS - is using a fork of DXVK (https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/) and don't even mention the original authors in the README or some kind of explanation of the software. Also no explanation of what they changed and why this isn't upstream?

Instead you have to go to the original license file (Nvidia re-licensed DXVK from zlib to MIT) to even get the names of the original authors:

Copyright (c) 2017-2021 Philip Rebohle
Copyright (c) 2019-2021 Joshua Ashton

They even do the bare, bare minimum to comply to the original license:

The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

The license even _asks_ for an acknowledgment and Nvidia chose to ignore it.


Also it seems like the total open source code of Remix is basically _only_ their DXVK fork. It intercepts the calls and sends them to their (currently) closed source RTX executable (NvRemixBridge.exe) if I understand the documentation correctly.

[piotrj3]

Can we talk about, the fact that Nvidia - a company that isn't really well known for supporting and publishing OSS - is using a fork of DXVK (https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/) and don't even mention the original authors in the README or some kind of explanation of the software. Also no explanation of what they changed and why this isn't upstream?

Instead you have to go to the original license file (Nvidia re-licensed DXVK from zlib to MIT) to even get the names of the original authors:


They even do the bare, bare minimum to comply to the original license:

The license even _asks_ for an acknowledgment and Nvidia chose to ignore it.

They didn't relicense. Nvidia's MIT is explicitly said to be MIT for remix parts (in the name of commit), and all old related stuff is in license old. This is really stupid bait.

[dimko]

I see its not going to be a game changer.
Good luck with completing your game without issues. Where quest items will be in dim area and you wont see them, making games impossible to complete. Or some barely visible corners, where enemies are, going to become even darker. And there is plethora of other problems of same nature.
Good luck getting majority of devs optimizing their games for new technology.

Cant help but wonder, if its going to be:
1. compatible ONLY with nvidia software? Page says AI is involved = hence i am guessing NVIDIA only technology.
2. Compatible with only seria 4K and above RTX devices?(so not even older devices from Nvidia will take advantage of it?)

Also... It is quite possible that AMD will be forced to come up with something similar. In fact, this may be a good way for them to make their hardware shine! Since they will be in control of similar software(as opposed to any kind of opencl or other use of GPU).
Similar to FSR and DLSS

[brucethemoose]

I see its not going to be a game changer.
Good luck with completing your game without issues. Where quest items will be in dim area and you wont see them, making games impossible to complete. Or some barely visible corners, where enemies are, going to become even darker. And there is plethora of other problems of same nature.
Good luck getting majority of devs optimizing their games for new technology.

Cant help but wonder, if its going to be:
1. compatible ONLY with nvidia software? Page says AI is involved = hence i am guessing NVIDIA only technology.
2. Compatible with only seria 4K and above RTX devices?(so not even older devices from Nvidia will take advantage of it?)

Also... It is quite possible that AMD will be forced to come up with something similar. In fact, this may be a good way for them to make their hardware shine! Since they will be in control of similar software(as opposed to any kind of opencl or other use of GPU).
Similar to FSR and DLSS

Mods typically have a higher tolerance for jank like that. Lighting problems here and there are totally fine as long as it doesn't break a main quest or whatever.

But you are right about it being Nvidia only. That has been the problem going back decades: cool, maybe even revolutionary tech that can't get deeply integrated because its Nvidia only. Dare I say it, but some of their efforts have probably snuffed out parallel efforts with broader compatibility.

> It is quite possible that AMD will be forced to come up with something similar

Please no... not if its practically unusuable on Nvidia/Intel cards. Same goes for Intel.

[L_A_G]

I see its not going to be a game changer.
Good luck with completing your game without issues. Where quest items will be in dim area and you wont see them, making games impossible to complete. Or some barely visible corners, where enemies are, going to become even darker. And there is plethora of other problems of same nature. Good luck getting majority of devs optimizing their games for new technology.

By this logic every game is going to have issues because of the sheer number of ways designers and programmers can screw up.

Cant help but wonder, if its going to be:
1. compatible ONLY with nvidia software? Page says AI is involved = hence i am guessing NVIDIA only technology.
2. Compatible with only seria 4K and above RTX devices?(so not even older devices from Nvidia will take advantage of it?)

For ray tracing we are talking about using multi-vendor/open APIs (D3D and Vulkan) where they don't even allow for the kind of fragmentation of the API that caused SO many issues for OpenGL and allowed Direct3D to catch up. As for compatibility, the ray-traced version of the original Portal worked fine on AMD hardware with ray-tracing so that's not an issue. Similarly ran that Portal update and the new "RT Overdrive" mode in Cyberpunk 2077 released yesterday just fine on a 3000-series card.

Thou despite having an RTX 3090 it was a choice between a stable 30 FPS at 4k with DLSS Performance and 60 FPS at 1440p with DLSS Quality.

What probably will be an issue of proprietary incompatible tech is the AI-based upscaling that's become all the rage lately. It started with the aforementioned totally proprietary and hardware-based DLSS, was first met by AMD's software-based and open FidelityFX, then Intel's partially open, partially software and hardware-based XeSS and now FidelityFX has a new version where the top tier is hardware based and AMD proprietary.

Thankfully those are all just post-processing resolution upscaling (and in the case of DLSS3 frame interpolation). Rather than something that would make a game not run on a particular platform or run without certain effects.

Also... It is quite possible that AMD will be forced to come up with something similar. In fact, this may be a good way for them to make their hardware shine! Since they will be in control of similar software(as opposed to any kind of opencl or other use of GPU).
Similar to FSR and DLSS

AMD has had dedicated ray-tracing hardware and API support for a couple of years already so that response is already here. Its something they began at the behest of Sony and Microsoft for their current generation consoles (released 2.5 years ago).

[dimko]

By this logic every game is going to have issues because of the sheer number of ways designers and programmers can screw up.

No, not screw up, too lazy to implement. why fix something that ain't broken?

[Quackdoc]

I see its not going to be a game changer.
Good luck with completing your game without issues. Where quest items will be in dim area and you wont see them, making games impossible to complete. Or some barely visible corners, where enemies are, going to become even darker. And there is plethora of other problems of same nature.
Good luck getting majority of devs optimizing their games for new technology.

Cant help but wonder, if its going to be:
1. compatible ONLY with nvidia software? Page says AI is involved = hence i am guessing NVIDIA only technology.
2. Compatible with only seria 4K and above RTX devices?(so not even older devices from Nvidia will take advantage of it?)

Also... It is quite possible that AMD will be forced to come up with something similar. In fact, this may be a good way for them to make their hardware shine! Since they will be in control of similar software(as opposed to any kind of opencl or other use of GPU).
Similar to FSR and DLSS

this is going to be a massive game changer, in fact, it already is, portal RTX is an RTX remix title and it's phenomenal. RTX remix being open source means that the application may be able to become able to support AMD gpus.

[NeoMorpheus]

this is going to be a massive game changer, in fact, it already is, portal RTX is an RTX remix title and it's phenomenal. RTX remix being open source means that the application may be able to become able to support AMD gpus.

Knowing them, I can almost guarantee that something in there will screw up AMD.

[tildearrow]

They didn't relicense. Nvidia's MIT is explicitly said to be MIT for remix parts (in the name of commit), and all old related stuff is in license old. This is really stupid bait.

MIT and zlib aren't compatible. The latter requires alteration notices, whereas the former does not.