Nvidia is open sourcing the RTX Remix Toolkit and releasing the Runtime SDK to 'empower developers' in 'virtually any game'

pcgamer.com:

Nvidia has announced today that it is making big advances in the RTX Remix world, advances that will open the tech up to allow modders unprecedented control over the whole technology. But the other side of this announcement is the release of an RTX Runtime SDK that will let the developers, or anyone with access to a game's rendering pipeline, integrate all of Remix's features in any game.

That's a potentially huge change because right now RTX Remix is limited to only DirectX 8 or DirectX 9 games, as later APIs use a different pipeline that doesn't allow Remix to essentially replace that wholesale. This limitation means that at the moment you're only seeing the fancy ray tracing, AI texture replacement, and upscaling features being used to remaster old PC classics.

I mean, that has meant we've got the Half-Life 2 mod in progress as well as Need For Speed Underground 2 and even Splinter Cell, among others. But it also means that a ton of other titles aren't eligible for the RTX Remix modding treatment.

«Today we're announcing the next major step which is making RTX Remix a complete open platform,» an Nvidia representative tells me in a pre-Computex briefing. «In June we will open source the RTX Remix Toolkit and this is the core Remix application used to author the mods and provide the AI textures.

»We are open sourcing our tools for the modding community so they can have more control over the technology."

This is a nice feature, allowing modders to get at the core of the software which should give them the tools to open up support in current titles that might be proving tricksy even though they meet the current specs for Remix.

But it's the second bit of this announcement that could have big ramifications for the modding community. «We will also release the RTX Remix Runtime SDK,» I'm told, «so that will empower developers to integrate Remix Runtime into virtually any game or digital content creation tool where they have access to rendering data. This will also