Half-Life is set to get a graphical update later this year that will match the still great gameplay experience with a visual experience worthy of the latest graphics cards.
As Eurogamer reports, software engineer Sultim Tsyrendashiev is working on a ray tracing mod for Valve’s 1998 first-person shooter. It’s actually based on a previous ray tracing port of the game, but Tsyrendashiev is re-engineering it. The end result is expected to offer hardware-accelerated ray tracing with global illumination, reflections, refractions, soft shadows, and a range of other visual effects promised.
As the teaser trailer for the project above demonstrates, it’s a vast improvement over the original. It’s also not Tsyrendashiev’s first attempt at adding ray tracing to a game, with a Serious Sam ray tracing mod released in August last year. The release trailer shows off how well that mod worked, which only increases the excitement for a Half-Life mod being available.
As with the Serious Sam mod, Tsyrendashiev will release the Half-Life mod via GitHub, but there’s no release date. As the YouTube description on the teaser makes clear, “these things, they take time,” but the trailer also states a 2022 release, giving Tsyrendashiev just under 12 months to deliver.
