RTX Remix
RTX Remix is a path traced renderer that hooks into a select number of DirectX 8 and 9 games. It essentially reads all of a game's rendering information and then reconstructs it (and has the ability to modify it) in real time in its own renderer. This renderer supports many features that this game and others from its time don't natively support, such as textures types like roughness and metallic maps as well as things like height maps, subsurface scattering, and translucency for things like windows, water, etc.
All textures used by 3-D geometry in the game can be modified using either the RTX Remix toolkit, community made Blender addons, or a simple text editor. This includes replacing the diffuse/albedo texture as well as adding the aforementioned additional texture maps.
You can make these edits on a per material basis, meaning that you can set a specific texture such as a mirror to have a low roughness value or a roughness map that has very dark sections which would make it reflect the world around it in real time, while the concrete floor and walls could be rough and non-reflective.
In addition, static objects can have their geometry replaced with versions that are far more geometrically complex than the game's own engine could handle.
Real time lights can also be added to them.
All of this can be done without modifying anything in the game itself (such as shader files, models, etc) - the only limitation being that all such modifications can only be seen while using RTX Remix's runtime with the game, as the client itself is completely unaware of any of these modifications - they only exist to Remix's renderer.
RTX Remix's runtime has a bridge that helps it translate a 32-bit game's data into its 64-bit renderer. This means that there are no 32-bit limitations when it comes to replacing textures with a Remix mod - you could have as many high resolution textures as you want, with the only limitation being VRAM.
Requirements:
The requirements for using RTX Remix are that you have a GPU that supports hardware accelerated raytracing.
This includes any RTX branded Nvidia GPU (RTX 2000 series and above) as well as any AMD RX 6000 series GPU or above.
Intel's dedicated GPUs may also work, but have had limited testing.
Installation:
The first thing you will want to do is get your game settings ready for RTX Remix. I recommend doing this before the next steps, as Remix's d3d9.dll can interfere with the SwgClientSetup_r.exe
Open the client setup, go to the Graphics tab, and make the following changes:
- Set Vertex/Pixel Shader Version to "Disabled"
- Make sure that "Disable Bump Mapping" is checked
Make sure that "Disable Multi-Pass Rendering" is checked.
Next, download the RTX Remix runtime from
Nvidia's GitHub repository. Extract the contents of the folder wherever you'd like.
What you do next will depend on whether you plan on using it with the 32-bit or 64-bit client.
32-Bit Instructions
Copy "d3d9.dll", "NvRemixLauncher32.exe", and the ".trex" folder to the root of your SWG Restoration folder (the folder with SwgClient_r.exe).
It is important to note that you want to copy the .trex folder itself in its entirety into the root folder rather than its contents.
64-Bit Instructions
Copy the contents (not the folder itself) of the .trex folder into the x64 folder inside of your SWG Restoration folder.
Before Launching The Game
I highly recommend downloading an
rtx.conf to place in the same folder as whichever client you plan to use it with. RTX Remix does not natively know what each texture type is (i.e. particle, sky, UI, water, decal, terrain, etc), so it needs users to manually mark these textures inside of its Developer Menu.
Having a pre-marked rtx.conf already available means that you shouldn't need to worry about having to manually mark most things.
Limitations
Currently, there are some hard limitations that cannot be worked around. These are as follows:
1. Anything that is meant to have color blending, such as colorable vehicles and certain body parts such as Twi'lek lekku, will either not have any coloration at all, or be entirely that color rather than only certain parts of it.
2. The sky does not properly transition between day and night. There are never any stars in the sky.
3. The game has a number of distant lights that seem to dynamically spawn and despawn based on where you are looking, which makes exterior lighting inconsistent.
4. Interior lighting is very sparse by default, as the game relies heavily on ambient lighting rather than actual point or spot lights. As Remix does not make use of ambient lighting at all, interior lighting would have to be redone for every single type of interior via a Remix mod.
5. Shadows and reflections only work for objects that are currently being rendered. SWG only renders what is directly in the camera's field of view, so this can and will create inconsistencies depending on where you are looking and what your camera FOV is set to.