Quake II RTX Free Demo Is Now Available to Download via Nvidia.com and Steam

Nvidia's graphically-updated version of Quake II — Quake II RTX — is now available for free. Last month, the graphics card maker had announced it would be remastering the game to show off the ray-tracing capabilities of its eponymous RTX platform, found on the Nvidia GeForce 20 series, that enables real-time ray-tracing. Nvidia is calling Quake II RTX “the world's first game that is fully path-traced”. It claims that its ray-tracing technique brings together “all lighting effects such as shadows, reflections, refractions and more into a single ray-tracing algorithm”. If you already own Quake II on Steam, you can now enjoy the full game as the path-traced version. Or you can pick up the free Quake II RTX demo on Nvidia's official website and Steam, which gives you three levels.

To get started, head to Nvidia.com or Steam to get Quake II RTX. Once the download is finished, run the installer and then pick from one of two options on the welcome page: a) free demo that gives you three levels; or b) full version that incorporates all levels. The latter choice also lets you play multiplayer deathmatch and cooperative multiplayer modes with the new path-traced feature. Of course, you'll need to own the game, which currently costs Rs. 350 in India on Steam. As we mentioned, Nvidia and id Software announced the remastered version of Quake II late last month.

If you want an idea of what it looks like before you bother with the installation process, here's a trailer:

Keep in mind that Quake II is still a game that is now over two decades old. It originally released in late 1997. Quake II RTX has published by Nvidia's LightSpeed Studios.

“We are giving Quake II back to gamers with a bold new look, as Quake II RTX,” Nvidia's head of GeForce marketing, Matt Wuebbling, said in a prepared statement. “Ray tracing is the technology that is defining the next generation of PC games, and it's fitting that Quake II is a part of that.”