Notes

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

When you think of Minecraft you might think of blocky graphics and simplistic textures. The beta launch of ray tracing capabilities on NVIDIA's RTX graphic cards has turned it into an entirely new game. To put it simply it allows for more realistic lighting, reflections, and shadows. minecraft servers It's like jumping from grainy VHS tapes into HD.



While I must admit that I've not spent a lot of time with Minecraft, I do respect it as a tool for creativity for younger gamers. Partially I just did not have the patience to deal with a large unstructured game, and frankly I never liked the way it looked. Aesthetics count a lot if you're spending hours in the virtual world (this is also why I didn't get into World of Warcraft). Ray tracing can make Minecraft more immersive.



The difference is evident the first time you load one of the six environments in NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds Pack. All six environments were designed by master Minecraft builders. Aquatic Adventure's water reflections and transparency were amazing to me when I first started playing. Similar graphic effects have been seen in big budget games such as Assassin's Creed, however they always feel like an exact representation of real life. Although Minecraft's water blocks that were mirrored were flat and in motion, it felt like you were in the real lake.



The sun's rays also provide the game with the appearance of a warm glow. You can almost feel the sun on your face. These are "god rays," large-scale light scattering effects that are designed to mimic the way sunlight is reflected by clouds. Although they can be overused for example, like the way J.J. Abrams flings lens flares at everything, it was awe-inspiring to see god rays with the ray tracer. The diffuse light was so natural that I was unable to believe that it was real-time rendering no matter if I was underwater.



While it may seem like I'm just over the moon with the gorgeous graphics, after having spent hours in the Minecraft beta I am more excited than ever before about the way that Ray Tracing can alter the way we experience games. Remedy's Control, for example utilized ray tracing in an unorthodox way, where it worked alongside traditional rendering techniques. Going full tilt in the ray tracing process is something we've only demonstrated so far in this Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's RTX enabled Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing is similar to HDR in that it's a fresh method of adding depth and texture, no matter if it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I've always found the rush to 4K to be a bit reckless. This is an enormous amount of processing power used to crunch more pixels, though it's not always possible to notice a huge difference in contrast to 1,440p or 1080p -- especially from your couch. As monitors and TVs shift towards higher refresh rates, I'd think that many gamers will be focusing on framerates and noticeable visual upgrades like HDR and ray tracing over 4K rendering. (But obviously, it's possible to hit all of these benchmarks eventually.



The main thing I learned from the Minecraft RTX beta is: realistic lighting is a huge help. It makes everything feel more real and immersive when light is coming from the direction it is required to go, and when shadows react realistically, reflections appear like you'd expect. It's the difference between feeling as though you're playing a video game, and feeling as though you're actually in the virtual world.



Ray tracing is still extremely energy-intensive and is not accessible to the majority of gamers. My test setup is powered by an Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS at 1080p when ray tracing has been activated. The hit is even greater for the RTX 2060, which is less expensive. It's reduced to around 30 FPS, according to NVIDIA benchmarks. This is the point where the company's DLSS tech comes into play. It makes use of AI powered rendering to produce superior quality results using lower resolution images. After I switched that on, Minecraft was able to be running at around 93FPS at 1080p. And NVIDIA says it'll give that struggling RTX 2060 GPU a bump to 53FPS.



Performance is even worse on RTX laptops which aren't as powerful as their 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. Since it's the top of the line mobile GPU it is likely to be a lot slower for RTX 2060 and 2070 machines.



Given these limitations, I don't expect any games to go all-in on the use of ray tracing anytime soonat least not in the manner we've seen in Minecraft. And I'd wager 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. But it's still enjoyable to see developers experiment with this new technology. Forget about the rush to 4K. We'll be judging future games based on how well they implement Ray Tracing and other graphic upgrades that you'll actually notice.


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