NVIDIA Unveils Quake II RTX Version 1.7.0 with Enhanced Features

NVIDIA launched Quake II RTX version 1.7.0, introducing a range of exciting enhancements and crucial bug fixes. Quake II RTX is NVIDIA's popular technical demonstration platform, showcasing the incredible real-time ray tracing capabilities of RTX GPUs.

 Though the latest update is not a significant one, it contains some essential fixes and improvements that Quake II RTX fans will appreciate. Among the key features are the introduction of a player flashlight, a resolution of multiple compatibility and stability issues, the fixing of texturing problems, reduction of visual noise and flicker in certain conditions, as well as enhancement of visual effects such as full-screen blend and particles.

Players can download Quake II RTX version 1.7.0 for free, and it is available now. This upgrade is undoubtedly a welcome development for gamers who appreciate high-quality graphics and smooth gameplay.

Fixed Issues:

• Fixed a crash in the game logic when a monster interacts with a door in notarget mode (#92)
• Fixed a crash when the map file doesn't have a VIS hunk (#223)
• Fixed some Vulkan validation layer issues (#229, #246, more)
• Fixed texture alignment issues on some doors (#211)
• Fixed the flare gun still using ammo with dmflags including 8192 (DF_INFINITE_AMMO) (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/)191)
• Fixed Vulkan queue initialization on platforms that don't support split queues (#248)
• Switched the OpenAL dependency with a statically linked library (#224)

Misc Improvements:

• Added support for building on PowerPC 64 LE CPU architecture (#260)
• Adjusted the automatic UI scaling to avoid making the UI too big
• Improved precision of target frame rate adjustment (#242)
• Tuned the full-screen blend effects to be less intensive
• Updated the Loading plaque texture (#265)

Contributions by GitHub user @res2k:

• Added a warning when screen-space image memory usage is very high (#179)
• Added control over fallback radiance of emissive materials (#210)
• Added menu controls for the full screen blend effects (#216)
• Added support for spotlights with an emission profile and a player flashlight (#203, #214)
• Fixed a crash when some textures are missing (#263)
• Fixed an overflow condition when pt_bsp_sky_lights is more than 1 (#262)
• Fixed animated textures on BSP models (#187)
• Fixed crashes when renderer initialization fails (#199)
• Fixed FSR image scaling in some cases (#232)
• Fixed incorrect scaling of textures without a custom material definition (#235)
• Fixed mode setting on Linux in GitGub CI builds (#268)
• Fixed save game compatibility with Q2RTX 1.5.0 (#193)
• Fixed some issues with lighting in custom maps (#189)
• Fixed texture data size computation for R16_UNORM textures (#236)
• Fixed the HDR screenshot feature (#190)
• Fixed the look of smoke effects (#195)
• Fixed the range of animated light intensities (#200)
• Fixed the replacement textures when multiple materials are used with the same base texture (#222)
• Improved light list handling to fix excessive flicker and noise (#234)
• Improved material system robustness for games with custom textures (#201)
• Improved polygonal light sampling to reduce noise and darkening (#266)
• Improved Wayland support (#261, #221)
• Integrated several fixes from Q2PRO (#196)
• Replaced the single sky_clusters.txt file with per-map files (#219)
• Tweaked particles to have more nuanced colors (#197)
• Updated SDL2 to 2.26.1 (#252)