Quake 2 RTX showcases what a fully ray/path traced game can look like. And today, we are happy to report that the game is available for free on GOG for a limited time.
For a limited time, you can acquire a free copy of Quake 2 RTX on GOG. Since this is a GOG release, the game does not also feature any DRM.
There is really nothing more to say. Quake 2 RTX looks glorious, even though its original version came out more than 20 years ago.
NVIDIA has updated the game’s materials so they can work with ray tracing. In addition, it implemented a full path traced renderer, and the game also supports DLSS.
It’s also worth noting that Quake 2 RTX can now run on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. After all, Update 1.5 added support for the new Vulkan extension. That patch also improved overall performance.
Since Quake Remastered has just come out, let’s hope that NVIDIA will overhaul it with a Ray Tracing Patch.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I never say no to free on gog 🙂
Cool now i need a RTX card that is not sold at a ridiculous price….gotta wait 2 years.
PS: i know you can launch the game without the raytracing effects….may as well play the original then.
You still can launch it on your GTX 10xx series… Im experimenting with magpie yesterday on my GTX 1060 6GB and then scale the tiny 640*360 windowed into 1920*1080 fullscreen with FSR with default RayTrace renderer, and Im stoked on how acceptable it looks with almost stable 30 FPS all of the time.
Gotta check out, thanks for the heads up
Very disappointed that the Quake remaster didn’t extend to this level. We got a 25 year old title remastered to look like a 24 year old instead.
“Quake II RTX is fully ray-traced and includes the 3 levels from the original shareware distribution.”
But…the RTX mod is always free, isn’t it? As it is on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1089130/Quake_II_RTX/
It was previously the full version. Now it’s similar to the Steam version (it includes the 3 levels from the shareware version).
John, you are full of sh*t. It was never the full version of the game. See https://www.gogdb.org/product/1825786806#builds There has only ever been one build on GOG which is the same one as now.
John, you are full of sh*t. It was never the full version of the game. See https://www.gogdb.org/product/1825786806#builds There has only ever been one build on GOG which is the same one as now.
Yes. The Quake II RTX release includes the default shareware levels, and it’ll unlock the rest if you have the full version of Quake 2. Same as at launch.
Someone posted it on accident in one of the Reddit deals forums so it’s randomly made its way around a few websites again, as is tradition.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/quake-ii-rtx-june-6-release-date/
Quake remaster is great, I’m having fun with it
So it’s not quake 2 rtx, is a demo of q2 rtx that only has 3 levels? Wtf
It’s full game plus 3 shareware levels that previously didn’t included. Thats what I can catch from the gog.com
No, it is just the shareware levels. If you want all of the Quake II content, you have to buy Quake II and copy its data files into the Quake II RTX directory. This is NOT a free for a limited time offer. This is literally a free engine for Quake II which you can also download from its Github repository. As usual John is an idiot who doesn’t understand what he writes about.
Tried it out. Had to upgrade nvidia drivers to 471.something and can’t wait to find out which games that particular driver breaks. “WHQL” certified of course -.-
Rendering a resolution around 720p I get 45+ fps on a GTX 1060 if I turn the less important features off and just keep “low GI” and 1 reflection/refraction bounce. Unfortunately the game itself is garbage. There’s a delay when shooting and if you get too close to an enemy your bullets will literally not hit him. Was Quake 2 always this bad or did this port break some things? Another flaw is the ridiculous number of redundant guns that makes it impossible to bind things to sensible keys. And then more binds to activate items or whatever. Terrible control scheme, absolutely awful, peak 90s “simulator” design which is totally out of place in an arcadey, fast shooter. More buttons better, they thought. I’m glad the dominance of consoles and their controllers ended that horrible tradition on PC long ago. One of the few good aspects of the 2000s.
I know more than one dev who will be happy the day they can get this light/shadow etc automatically due to raytracing without having to fake and bake it like they have to with raster…. that said i personally suspect its 10+ years away
Quake II RTX definitely does NOT support DLSS. They actually can’t, because of GPL issues. Please remove that from the article.