Valve's Portal game recently received the RTX upgrade, boosting ray tracing and path tracing into one of the most popular games of all time. However, your perception of reality in the game will be tested further as NVIDIA engineers placed QR codes throughout the game, changing the looks of companion cubes.
Portal RTX is ripe with easter eggs, & several nods to NVIDIA's technology through the use of scannable QR codes
YouTuber 2kliksphilip recently uploaded a video to his channel, "The Cheats and Secrets of Portal RTX." While the video shows the various QR codes he found, he also tried many cheats from the first two Portal games. Interestingly, he noticed some of the ray tracings were broken to some degree. This isn't surprising, as the new RTX version was upgraded from the original game released in 2007.
Airboat spawning commands, Portal 2 weapon spawning, weapons appearing in inappropriate locations, and several no-clippings later, 2kliksphilip begins to find the first of several QR codes placed into the game by the engineers. Also, there are several NVIDIA RTX references in the game, which adds to the humor of the Portal series.
While a reliable source has stated that more QR codes were discovered than in the YouTube video, it is impressive to see a fifteen-year-old game look like today's graphical standards made it. And it is added to a slowly growing list of games getting the graphical upgrade, as recently seen with the first-person shooter, Quake.
2kliksphilip ends his video by placing several mirror cubes into a fire pit to crash the game. He states that he did experience minor slowdowns of his system but is still impressed that we reached this level of graphical enhancement and improvement as quickly as we have, as the technology does appear more advanced than what was available only a few years ago.
If you still own a copy of Portal, the new RTX version is free for users. However, if you have never had the opportunity to play the game, now is the perfect time to jump into the portal and find the mysteries within this revolutionary puzzler.
News Sources: VideoCardz, 2kliksphilip (YouTube)
