Valve: will Source Engine 2 also receive Ray Tracing support?

Source: HW Upgrade added 16th Jan 2021

  • valve:-will-source-engine-2-also-receive-ray-tracing-support?

How would you see Half-Life: Alyx with Ray Tracing support? A rumor feeds the possibility that this feature will soon be introduced for games based on Source Engine 2. The “overwhelming proof” has been found in the Artifact source code – here’s what we know.

by Pasquale Fusco published , at 08: 31 in the Videogames channel

Valve Half-Life

The Source Engine 2 seems increasingly distant from a possible retirement. The graphics engine used by Valve for the latest Half-Life: Alyx may soon receive a major update which will introduce support for Ray Tracing

This is what emerges from the latest rumors circulated online, rumors that have triggered the curiosity of fans and of those who, after all, still have hopes for a hypothetical Half -Life 3.

Source Engine 2 + RTX On: the curious discovery of a user

The first evidence of the arrival of RTX support was found by user Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw), who shared on Twitter a screenshot showing the source code of the Beta version of Artifact just updated – code archived on GitHub.

– Pavel Djundik ( @thexpaw) January 14, 2021

As Djundik points out, in the code we find now two new strings: “RTX” and “Raytracing Shader” . The wording leaves no room for doubt, it could be overwhelming evidence of a possible update through which the Ray Tracing , and therefore the possibility to render reflections, refractions and shadows accurately.

Of course we are talking about simple indiscretions, but the potential is certainly intriguing. The games developed in Source Engine 2 are Dota 2, Dota Underlord and Half-Life: Alyx. There is also the aforementioned Artifact, a game that – as Wccftech points out – offers relatively “light” graphics, which makes it the perfect test bed to test this feature. Not surprisingly, no official statement has come from Valve.