Minecraft, the wildly popular community-based game that allows users to explore and build worlds, is getting the RTX treatment. The game that has popularized the 8-bit-blocky look in a time when computer game graphics are pushing towards hyper-realism, the RTX update is a very interesting feature to come to the game.
Nvidia has worked closely with Mojang, the developer of Minecraft rather closely to bring Ray Tracing and even Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling 2.0 to the game. Nvidia has brought RTX to Minecraft by implementing a number of interesting technologies. The first is bringing a physically-based material-system to the game. What this does is introduces textures, light reflectance properties, depth and even metallicity to the materials found in the Minecraft world. The other technique being implemented is path tracing, which is basically simulating the way rays of light would travel through a scene. When this is combined with the aforementioned physically based material system, you get a world of Minecraft that looks wildly different from what you’re used to.
The new RTX beta launches on the 16th of April, with the final version expected to roll out before the year’s end. On April 16, existing owners of Minecraft will be able to download 6 worlds that have ray-tracing built-in. During the beta, the experience will be single-player only, but when the final version is rolled out, it would incorporate the multi-player experience. Users will also be able to build their own ray-traced worlds or convert their existing Java based creations to the Windows 10 Bedrock format.
The full path tracing implementation in Minecraft is the same that was used to remaster QuakeII with RTX, so we know it is intensely demanding on PC hardware. Nvidia says that with the new DLSS 2.0 implementation, users can expect 1.7 times the better performance. Given that Minecraft isn’t a shooter, getting even 60fps should be a good enough experience, with higher refresh rates not really leading to anything very meaningful.
If you own Minecraft, you can get the beta on April 16th. If not, you can buy yourself a copy of the game here.