Quake 3 Arena Steps Into the Modern Light with RTX Remix

Modder Woodboy90 spent months rebuilding Quake 3 Arena, giving it a modern look. His mod uses NVIDIA’s RTX Remix to add route tracing to three classic maps: Q3DM1, Q3DM6, and Q3DM10. Most of the textures have been much improved, surfaces now reflect light more realistically, and shadows fall deep across venues that previously only had simple glows.

Path tracing has completely changed the familiar passageways, as light bounces off metal grates and stone walls just as it does in real life, and exploding a rocket creates these gorgeous pools of radiance on the floor. You can even see your own shadow move about as you play, and distant explosions produce flickering highlights on those valuable armor pickups. Woodboy90 effectively rebuilt all of the materials from scratch, using tools like imgupscaler.ai and Photopea to ensure that every detail was spot on while maintaining the original game’s raw, gritty flavor.

Before you start, you will need to perform a clean installation. Begin with a blank copy of Quake 3 Arena, then download the Quake3e executable, QindieGL’s OpenGL DLL, and the RTX Remix runtime version 1.2.4. Place those files in the base folder among your configuration adjustments such as autoexec.cfg and q3rtx.pk.3. Launch Quake3e once to install the engine, then copy the Q3RTXDemo folder to the mods folder and adjust your resolution settings in the config for a smooth 4K experience (or whatever your screen can support). Once inside, set the lighting to vertex, the textures to highest, and turn off the dynamic lights. Finally, use J, K, and L to turn the UI, weapon, and third-person perspective on and off.

The NVIDIA team picked up on it quickly, and Jacob Freeman, one of their GeForce evangelists, released a slew of photos on X to showcase the remixed maps, calling it one of his all-time favorites revived. Light rays cut through the mist in Q3DM1, railgun trails leave brilliant streaks on the polished floors, and player models capture all of the lovely specular highlights from neighboring blasts.

Performance on ray tracing-enabled GPUs is smooth, with users reporting rather fluid frame rates in 1080p and 4K after adjusting the resolution settings, though this varies depending on your specific hardware. Early users on ModDB (download here) are gushing about the illumination in dark corners and how realistic the explosions appear now.

But Woodboy90’s intentions extend far beyond these three levels; he wants to remake every stage in Quake 3, replace the character and object models with more detailed 3D models, and refresh the HUD. Expect to see a variety of fascinating elements, such as railguns with etched barrels, rocket launchers that appear to have been shot, and backgrounds that change from dawn to twilight.
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