NVIDIA releases the first RTX Remix update to bring DirectX 9 games to NVIDIA DLSS and RTX technologies

NVIDIA has released an update for the RTX Remix runtime. This is a limited part of the software platform that allows developers to add new technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, path tracing or AI-enhanced game resources like textures to DirectX 9 and DirectX 8 games.

Image source: NVIDIA

RTX Remix is ​​part of the NVIDIA Studio Toolkit, which requires two parts: the Creator Toolkit and the Runtime. The update is only for the runtime, but the toolkit is still only available to certain developers (it will go into Early Access at some point in the future). One day, NVIDIA could open up its software to all game developers, and when that happens, the company will be ready.”Empower the modding community“.

It should be noted that RTX Remixed games can only be played on GeForce RTX graphics cards. Eventually the technology will be completely open, but that will not change the fact that only a certain part of the gaming community can play these games. Unless, of course, someone changes the platform itself to support third-party providers. Remix Runtime Bridge now accessible on GitHub Open Source.

Many improvements have been made to Bridge in this version to address various game compatibility issues:

1. Fixed shader parser logic issue in games with Shader Model 2+;
2. Fixed a surface data transfer issue that caused crashes in some games.
3. Added support for games changing the main window handle when set to reset;
4. No vertex resolution on the server to fix unnecessary crashes in some situations;
5. Adjusted render state initialization according to the official DirectX 9 documentation to fix geometry distortions in some games.
6. Added handling of CreateTextureXXX calls with level = 0 to fix geometry distortions in some games;
7. Fixed handling mouse input for games where the mouse pointer would not move in-game or when the Remix menu is open, and added more DirectInput fixes for games using other exclusive modes. Added an optional hook to exchange input messages, required for some games.
8. Improved conformance with native D3D9 behavior when working with shaders and swap chain initialization;
9. Added additional input validation on client and server side – now the server correctly returns error codes to the client, with the error being acceptable;
10. Added DPI information to the bridge client to properly scale the game window and handle mouse input on displays over 100% DPI.
11. Optimized SharedHeap to reduce startup crashes and require less fine-tuning of its parameters. Since SharedHeap can still cause problems in some games, the developers have disabled it by default, but it can be enabled in Bridge.conf using the useSharedHeap parameter;
12. Added an option to force the window client client.forceWindowed into the bridge.conf file.

DXVK Remix improvements and game compatibility fixes:

1. Sorting improvements. Remix now includes a first set of heuristics to bypass culling on the engine side;
2. improved handling of alpha-tested geometry that uses fractional (“fuzzy”) alpha;
3. improved detection of shadow volumes;
4. Support for capturing normals in the vertex capture path;
5. RTX Remix menu and documentation improvements: Existing documentation has been expanded and updated, and tooltips have been added to the UI to make it more accessible;
6. Release debug symbols are now available in a separate package remix-0.2.0-symbols.zip to facilitate source code debugging from compiled binaries.