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| A screen grab of GTA 2 RTX Remix |
As the gaming world gears up for the massive launch of GTA 6 on November 19, one dedicated modder is taking a trip back in time to give the classic top-down era a serious modern upgrade. A developer known as gebdag has introduced full path tracing to GTA 2, the iconic 1999 crime saga from Rockstar Games.
The project, which is available for download on GitHub, utilizes Nvidia’s RTX Remix technology to completely replace the game’s original lighting. By implementing path-traced illumination—a technique that realistically simulates how light travels and bounces around a scene—the mod breathes new life into the retro title.
Here comes a GTA2 RTX Remix mod with full path tracing + dynamic time of day! From modder gabdeg 🤯 pic.twitter.com/dZ0eMyIfms
— Jacob Freeman (@GeForce_JacobF) September 25, 2026
A Visual Leap for a Classic
Nvidia’s Jacob Freeman showcased the project, titled GTA2 RTX Remix, in a clip shared on X on September 25. The footage highlights the dramatic shift in atmosphere: fires, explosions, and gunfire now cast dynamic, realistic light across the cityscape, while vehicle headlights and neon signs illuminate the streets around them. The mod also introduces emissive maps for certain textures, allowing objects and light sources to glow naturally.
Beyond lighting, the mod adds a dynamic time-of-day cycle via Remix Plus, a community-built version of the RTX Remix runtime. The difference is most striking at night, where the improved lighting transforms the game's aesthetic. The mod also fixes the game's original 4:3 aspect ratio, updating it to 16:9 widescreen. This prevents cars and pedestrians from "popping" into view at the edges of the screen. For performance enthusiasts, the mod can reach 60fps with frame generation enabled, and players can press F4 to open a settings panel to adjust lighting and time of day on the fly.
Bridging the Technical Gap
Bringing path tracing to a game from 1999 is no small feat. GTA 2 originally ran on DirectDraw and an early version of Direct3D, whereas RTX Remix is designed for DirectX 8 and 9 games. To bridge this gap, gebdag built a custom Direct3D 9 wrapper consisting of two DLL files. This wrapper translates the game’s legacy rendering calls into a format that RTX Remix can read, allowing the runtime to swap the original rendering path for its own path-traced renderer.
Because GTA2 RTX Remix is a mod rather than a standalone release, players will need a working copy of the original game to run it. Gebdag built and tested the project against version 9.6 of GTA 2—the freeware release Rockstar made available on PC in December 2004. However, for the day-night cycle and correct HUD display, using Remix Plus 1.5.1 is recommended.
GTA 2 now joins a growing list of older PC titles that have been reworked with RTX Remix, including Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Serious Sam.