The open beta of Nvidia's RTX Remix is ready to grab: Remaster your favourite old games to give them a massive graphics upgrade

Do you have an old game that you wish was remastered to make full use of today's graphics technologies? For me, it's the original Deus Ex, and I'd love to see that with modern lighting and fully ray-traced. We've had some so far, of course, such as Quake 2 and Portal, but these weren't mods, as you had to download the entire updated game. Now, with the release of Nvidia's RTX Remix open beta, you'll be able to do it yourself to any DirectX 8 or 9 game

Modding games to change how they look or run has been around for as long as there have been games, but the scene now is a huge industry by itself, with vast databases of textures, levels, and entire remakes of games all available.

But overhauling the graphics of an older game is no small task, especially when it comes to writing code for better shaders and the like, and that's where RTX Remix comes in.

Nvidia first announced it back in September 2022 and its premise was sheer brilliance: Run an old game and use the Remix tool to capture its assets (e.g. texture maps). The program then lets you apply some modern magic to them, increasing the resolution and applying far better lighting.

Once done, you can either bundle it all into a universal pack that can be uploaded to a mod database for others to use or you just inject it back into the game and enjoy the sparkly new visuals.

RTX Remix has been kept out of the public's hands, with only a handful of select developers permitted to use it. Well not anymore, as the latest beta version is fully open to everyone.

So, what do you get? There are two main tools: one is a runtime used to capture a game's assets, as well as inject updated ones back into it, and the other does all of the asset magic required. With the so-called creator app, you'll be able to do some pretty neat things:

The runtime lets you experiment with new lighting models and other shader effects in real-time, as you're playing the game. This also includes enabling other aspects of Nvidia's technology