Valve made a miraculous return to the Half-Life franchise last year with Alyx releasing back in March 2020, and with it the proper debut of their new Source 2 engine was unveiled. Valve even reignited their failed attempt at a card game, Artifact, and a recent update to the new Artifact Beta has seemingly added some settings involving ray tracing…
Whether this means Artifact will be getting ray tracing support, or the whole Source 2 engine as a whole is still unknown. Though given the gameplay and popularity of Artifact at the moment, it’s more than likely to be the latter. The evidence that we do have right now lies within the latest update’s game files, which added two strings to the game: “RTX” and “Raytracing Shader”:
Obviously this has sparked some discussion online. The first and most obvious would be adding ray tracing to Half-Life: Alyx, but that would likely be too intensive on system performance to even think about right now, and you’d probably have to have an extremely beefy setup in order to even have a chance at running it. Though ray tracing in VR would surely amp up the immersion significantly.
The second theory is that some old Valve games would be getting the engine upgrade treatment. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 are the most requested candidates so far. Though previous attempts by Valve to do this kind of maneuver haven't always gone down well.
Whatever it is that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s clear that Valve is interested in the tech. But as we know with multiple Valve projects in the past: if they are interested, it doesn't always mean it’s going to happen, and could just as easily be dropped as quick as it was picked up.
What do you think? Would you be interested in ray tracing support for Source 2 games? What about Source 2 remakes of old Valve games? Let us know!
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give me Titanfall 2 baby
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Honestly Speaking the one game that will genuinely benefit from RAY TRACING OR Ai Assisted Image Reconstruction will be Portal. Heck Portal 3 will make me cry. If Portal 3 goes Vr thats when I Get a VR headset.
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Let's hope they add DLSS too then
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fck i voted for the wrong one, i wanted left4dead to be remade in the source 2
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i wanted to vote for portal ended up voting for left for dead. but left for dead is a game where you need good fps portal is more enjoyable
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to me better or worser visuals in portal would make no difference to me as its a puzzle game so i wouldnt even think hmm this place looks nice, as for left4dead i played it fine with 40fps+bad net and didnt notice that fps is that important in it
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same once you really get into the flow you really tend to not notice the visuals. Unless it is too Damn good and your not really doing anything at the moment so you stop to take it in RED DEAD REDEMPTION DID THAT TO ME. and i played LEFT 4
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DEAD 2 when it was made free quite a few years ago and i had a very dated system back then. i played at like what 28-37 somthing Fps but then i do this thing wherin i drop all the setting and play in windowed mode with resolution down to720
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sheesh i instantly started playing much more differently as i felt more reactive to the things happening i was able to line up some a string of head shots. and now after getting a 144hz Screen with my GTX 1080 **** i am pretty much Sniping
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with a pistol. i am not saying that Higher fps means better gamer god no i still suck compared to my friends who are veterans at certain games. but getting the Visual Speed really just improves your reaction and Sorta A mental Confidence BO
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BOOST. Like i now look forward to Playing with Difficulty multipliers and going beyond hard and Death Wish. cause i just sorta have that metal thing saying go for it.
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Personally Speaking for the next Portal I would Love like Crazy Liquid and Dirt Physics like acctuly dig a hole in the ground and let water fill it up or somthing than shinier Coat of paint.
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I wouldn't ever use raytracing in CSGO, unless they find a way to make sure there's close to zero FPS loss.
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i could without a doubt see CS:GO be the kind of game that graphically could benefit big time from Raytracing, without there being a "noticeable" difference in the fps. Yes the game might go from 600fps to 300 fps, but like... come on, no monitor can do 600hz anyways
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what could it get from ray tracing?
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It generally helps make things look even more realistic, even with older games. Lighting is a big thing that helps with realism. In CSGO it could probably help seeing shadows or changes in light quicker, which gives you an advantage.
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but most people lower the graphics even if they can get 200+fps on max just to be able to have clearer picture and with it making the less realistic game
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Yeah, that's true too, but mostly because it's only a disadvantage. RTX could be an advantage, but only if there was barely any performance hit or extra latency.
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Higher FPS helps cause less latency and makes the mouse feel smoother too, the latter being less noticeable above a constant 300 FPS though.