Hey, everyone! Today we're releasing v1.6.0, featuring the below fixed issues and improvements. Breaking Changes:

• Re-designed the material definition system for flexibility and modding.
• Removed support for the VK_NV_ray_tracing Vulkan extension, which is superseded by
• VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline and VK_KHR_ray_query that were added earlier.

• Added a setting to enable nearest filtering on world textures, pt_nearest.
• Added a setting to enable the use of texture and model overrides in the GL renderer, gl_use_hd_assets (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/151)
• Added support for converting sky surfaces into lights based on their flags, see pt_bsp_sky_lights.
• Added support for IQM models and skeletal animation for the RTX renderer.
• Added support for making any models translucent, and cl_gunalpha specifically.
• Added support for masked materials (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/127)
• Added support for polygonal light extraction from MD2/MD3/IQM models.
• Added support for smooth normals on the world mesh through a BSPX extension.
• Added support for unlit fog volumes. See the comment in fog.c for more information.
• Enabled game builds for ARM64 processors.
• Extended the "shader balls" feature to support arbitrary test models with animation.

• Fixed a crash that happened when loading a map with non-emissive lava material.
• Fixed loading of multi-skin MD3 models.
• Fixed long texture animation sequences.
• Fixed some bugs in the model validation code (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/149)
• Fixed some self-shadowing artifacts by increasing the shadow and bounce ray offsets.
• Fixed some unlit or partially lit triangles by improving the BSP cluster detection logic.
• Fixed the MZ_IONRIPPER sound (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/143)
• Fixed the rcon_password variable flags to prevent the password from being stored (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/176)
• Fixed the background blur behavior when the menu is opened on a system with over 24 days of uptime.
• Fixed the barriers in non-uniform control flow in the tone mapping shader (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/129)
• Fixed the buffer flags on the acceleration structure scratch buffer (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/142)
• Fixed the crash that sometimes happened when entering The Reactor map (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/123)
• Fixed the disappearing light surfaces on some polygons with almost-collinear edges.
• Fixed the lighting on the first person weapon when it's left-handed.
• Fixed the missing frame 0 in repeated entity texture animations.
• Fixed the pipeline layout mismatch in asvgf.c (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/140)
• Fixed the rendering of the planet's atmosphere in the space environment.
• Fixed the sampled lighting estimator math, improved specular MIS.

• Allowed changing the VSync setting without reloading the renderer.
• Extended the supported light style range to 200% to fix over-bright lighting.
• Implemented anisotropic texture sampling for objects seen in reflections and refractions using ray cones.
• Improved CPU performance by not re-allocating the TLAS on every frame.
• Improved the handling of transparent effects in the acceleration structures.
• Removed the fake ambient that was added when global illumination is set to "off".
• Removed the initialization of the async compute queue, which was unused. This improves rendering performance and fixes some compatibility issues with AMD drivers.
• Removed the MAX_SWAPCHAIN_IMAGES limit for XWayland (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/122)
• Replaced the implementation of model data handling on the GPU to improve scalability (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/171)
• Replaced the material BRDF with a more physically correct one and removed the non-linear albedo correction function.
• Replaced the normal map normalization on load with a compute shader to speed up engine startup and map loading.

• Added auto-complete for the ray_tracing_api console variable (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/112)
• Added support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/145)
• Added support for HDR monitors (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/159)
• Added support for synthesizing emissive textures and fixing lighting in custom maps (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/111, https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/136)
• Allowed saving and loading games in expansion packs (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/157, https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/150)
• Fixed a crash due to invalid clusters on some world geometry (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/165, https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/163)
• Fixed the debugging features of the bloom pass (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/160)
• Fixed the lighting from light surfaces with animated textures (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/137)
• Implemented full-screen blend effects (such as on item pickup) in the RTX renderer (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/110)
• Improved support for old mods and enabled x86 builds of the dedicated server (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/116)
• Improved the behavior of Dynamic Resolution Scaling on map changes (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/155)
• Improved the FPS counter behavior when r_maxfps is set (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/issues/117, https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/118)
• Improved the tone mapper (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/156)
• Replaced the rendering of laser beams as billboards with volumetric primitives (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/108)

• Added settings for texture filtering in the UI (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/173)
• Added support for maps in QBSP format (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/133, https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/154)
• Merged over 350 commits from Q2PRO (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/166)
• Moved the security camera definitions to per-map files for modding (https://github.com/NVIDIA/Q2RTX/pull/169)