Following the AI-enhanced texture packs for Morrowind, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom and Max Payne, here comes another one for Valve’s classic Half-Life game. Cyril Paulus has used ESRGAN and has updated all of the game’s textures, including the ones for the XEN levels. So yeah, while Black Mesa Xen is not available yet, we can get a small idea now of what a remastered version of the Xen levels could look like.
What’s really cool here is that, like in all cases, the updated HD textures are as close to their original versions as possible. Unfortunately, though, some textures like liquids and chrome seem to be corrupted so it’s not perfect yet.
In order to showcase the visual differences, Paulus has released a comparison video between the AI-enhanced and the vanilla textures that you can find below. As you will immediately notice, there is big difference in some textures, especially for those used for some computers and some signs.
Those interested can download the ESRGAN HD Texture Pack for Half Life from here. All you have to do in order to install it is extract the folder inside steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life and then restart Steam.
Have fun everyone!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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