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GTA 2 Gets a Modern Makeover With Full Path Tracing and 60 FPS
If you have been looking for an excuse to revisit Anywhere City, a new mod for the 27-year-old classic Grand Theft Auto 2 might be exactly what you need.
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If you have been looking for an excuse to revisit Anywhere City, a new mod for the 27-year-old classic Grand Theft Auto 2 might be exactly what you need. Modder gebdag has released GTA2 RTX Remix, a project that utilizes Nvidia’s RTX Remix technology to inject full path tracing and a dynamic time-of-day system into the 1999 title.
Bridging the Legacy Gap
Bringing modern lighting to a game that originally relied on outdated APIs like DirectDraw and early versions of Direct3D is no small feat. Because Nvidia’s RTX Remix platform is designed for Direct3D 9, the modder had to create a custom renderer to serve as a bridge. By using two specific DLLs—gta2dx9.dll and gta2dx9_vid.dll—the mod translates the legacy graphics pipeline into a format that RTX Remix can recognize and process in real time.
The result is a dramatic transformation of the top-down action. Neon signs, vehicle fires, and explosions now cast realistic light and shadows, and the addition of a day-night cycle makes the city feel significantly more alive. You can even open an in-game menu by pressing F4 to tweak the lighting settings to your personal preference.
Modern Standards for a Classic
Beyond the visuals, the mod addresses several modern quality-of-life improvements. It introduces widescreen 16:9 support, replacing the original 4:3 aspect ratio, and fixes the common issue of objects and pedestrians popping in at the screen edges. Perhaps most importantly, it unlocks frame rates up to 60 FPS using Frame Generation technology.
The GTA2 RTX Remix project is open-source and available on GitHub. To get it running, you will need a copy of Grand Theft Auto 2 (specifically version 9.6, which was released as freeware by Rockstar Games in 2004), a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or 11, and the necessary RTX Remix runtime files. It is a fantastic example of how community-driven tools are keeping beloved retro titles relevant in the modern era, joining a growing list of RTX-remixed games that includes classics like Morrowind and Max Payne.
