You can now download the Half-Life 1: Ray Traced project. True to its title, this is a mod that improves on the first ray-traced Half-Life.
The first version of Half-Life 1: Ray Tracinga mod that adds ray tracing to the first installment of Valve’s classic FPS series.
The project looks impressive. You can see what an old man like HL looks like with dynamic lighting below.
- Half-Life 1: Ray Tracing – download mod
- The project page on Github
By default, the mod runs without texture filtering. Their pixelated versions look better in my opinion, but if you don’t like them, you can change them in the menu.
Half-Life 1: Ray Traced is the latest example of the recently popular trend of adding ray tracing to older games. It’s an effective method of visibly improving graphics, and it’s also relatively easy to do, so it’s no surprise that there are a number of such projects out there. Just to mention Quake 2 RTX or Portal RTX.
Ray tracing is a very demanding technology, so adding it to older games is even more beneficial, as the end result often works well not only on the most powerful PCs. Of course, there are exceptions to this, like RTX Portal, whose performance leaves a lot to be desired, but in this case the visuals have been completely improved, rather than just adding highlights to old models and textures.
- Half-Life and Steam