Notes

'Minecraft' Looks like an Entirely new Game With NVIDIA's RTX Ray Tracing

When you think of Minecraft, you probably imagine simple graphics and simple textures. The beta launch of ray tracing support on NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards has made it an entirely new game. Ray tracing can provide more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. It's like jumping from shaky VHS tapes to HD.



I'll admit, I've never spent a lot of time playing Minecraft however, I've always regarded it as an innovative tool for younger gamers. It was partly because I didn't have the patience to deal with a large unstructured game, and honestly I never liked the way it looked. Aesthetics count a lot if you're spending hours in an online world (this is the reason I never played World of Warcraft). Ray tracing can make Minecraft more immersive.



The difference is obvious the first time you launch one of the six environments that comprise NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, all of which were designed by master Minecraft builders. When I booted up Aquatic Adventure I was stunned by the water reflections and the clarity of crystal blocks. We've seen similar graphical flourishes from big budget titles such as the Assassin's Creed series however, they've always felt like an approximation of reality. Although Minecraft's mirrored water blocks were immobile and flat it was as if you were looking at a real lake.



Then there are the light rays that shower the game in an enthralling glow. You can almost feel the sunlight on your face. These are volumetric light scattering effects that are reminiscent of the way that sunlight shines through clouds. While they are not a good idea to overuse in the same way as when J.J. Abrams flings lens flares at all things, it was fascinating to witness god rays through ray tracing. The diffuse light looked so natural that I couldn't believe it was real-time rendering regardless of whether I was in the water or not.



Although it could sound like I am just excited about the stunning graphics, after spending hours playing the Minecraft beta, I am more excited than ever about how Ray Tracing is going to alter the way we experience games. Recent games like Remedy's Control used ray tracing in a hybrid way, where it worked alongside traditional rendering techniques. Ray tracing has been seen in full force with the Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing is similar HDR in that you can add texture and depth to your image, regardless of whether it's rendered at 1080p or 4K. I find the rush to 4K to be a bit foolish. It's an enormous amount of processing power that can crunch more pixels. It's rarely noticeable from your couch, but it can be a significant increase in performance over 1440p and 1080p. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd expect that many gamers will be focusing on frame rates and noticeable visual enhancements such as HDR and ray tracing, which is above 4K rendering. (But obviously, it is possible to meet all of these benchmarks in the future.



The most important thing I learned from the Minecraft RTX beta is: Realistic lighting is a big aid. Everything is more real from the right direction, when shadows respond realistically and reflections appear exactly just as you would expect. It's the difference between feeling like you're playing a video game, and feeling like you're in a virtual world.



Unfortunately, ray tracing is still incredibly power hungry, and is not accessible to the majority of gamers. On my test rig, that is powered by a Core i7 8700K CPU and an RTX 2080 Ti, Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS in 1080p when Ray Tracing is enabled. The effect is even worse for the RTX 2060, which is less expensive. It's reduced to around 30 FPS according to NVIDIA benchmarks. That's where the company's DLSS technology comes in. It makes use of AI powered rendering to deliver higher quality results from lower-resolution images. When I switched it on, Minecraft jumped to around 93FPS in 1080p on my system. NVIDIA claims it will provide the struggling RTX 2060 GPU an additional 53FPS.



Performance is even worse on RTX laptops that aren't as powerful as desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims an RTX 2080 Max-Q laptop, like Acer's Triton 500, will hit 57 FPS in Minecraft with Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled. You can expect things to be slower with RTX 2060 or 2070 models, as this is the company's top-of-the-line mobile GPU.



These limitations mean that I don't think most games will fully embrace Ray Tracing anytime soon. Not like the way we've seen with Minecraft. I'd bet that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X both of which run AMD's forthcoming Radeon hardware, will have similar problems coping with the performance of ray tracing. It's great to see developers testing this new technology. Forget about the rush to 4K. We'll be judging future games on how they use Ray Tracing and other graphical improvements that you'll notice.
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