Notes

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

When you think of Minecraft you may think of blocky graphics and simplistic textures. The beta launch of ray tracing support on NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards has turned it into an entirely new game. Ray tracing allows for more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. It's like the jump from VHS tapes that are grainy to HD.



I'll admit that I've not spent a lot of time with Minecraft although I've always respected it as a creative tool for younger gamers. Partly because I didn't have the patience to deal with an unstructured, massive game. And partly because I didn't like how it looked. If you're planning on spending hours in a virtual world aesthetics are crucial. This is also why I didn't get into World of Warcraft. Ray tracing can make Minecraft more immersive.



The difference is apparent the first time you load one of the six environments of NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds Pack. Each of the six environments was designed by master Minecraft builders. When I started up Aquatic Adventure I was awestruck by the reflections of the water and the transparency of the crystal blocks. Similar graphical flourishes have been seen in big budget games like Assassin's Creed, but they always feel like an exact representation of real life. Although Minecraft's water blocks that were mirrored were immobile and flat, it felt like you were looking at a real lake.



The rays of sunlight also give the game a warm glow. You can almost feel the sun on your face. These are "god rays," volumetric light scattering effects meant to mimic the way sunlight shines through clouds. Although they are sometimes overused, such as the way J.J. Abrams is notorious for throwing lens flares at everything and everything, watching god rays be executed in a realistic manner using the ray tracer was absolutely stunning. The diffuse light appeared so natural that I couldn't believe that it was real-time rendering no matter if I was in the water or not.



It might sound like I'm just talking about beautiful graphics, but after spending hours in this Minecraft beta I'm more excited than ever about the way ray tracing can change the way we play games. Recent titles like Remedy's Control used ray tracing in a hybrid fashion, where it worked alongside traditional rendering techniques. We've seen ray-tracing in its most complete form through the Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing feels similar to HDR in that it's a fresh method to add depth and texture, regardless if it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I find the rush to 4K to be a little naive. It's a lot of processing power to crunch more pixels. It's not always apparent from your couch, but it can be a significant improvement in performance over 1440p and 1080p. As monitors and TVs move towards higher refresh rates, I'd think that many gamers will put more emphasis on frame rates and noticeable visual enhancements like HDR and ray tracing over 4K rendering. (But of course, the ultimate goal is to surpass all those benchmarks in the near future.)



My big lesson from the Minecraft RTX beta? realistic lighting is a huge help. Everything feels more real when light comes from where it is supposed to and when shadows respond in a realistic manner and reflections appear as you expect. It's the difference between feeling as if you're playing games, and feeling as if you're entering an actual virtual world.



Unfortunately, ray tracing is still extremely power-hungry, and not accessible to all gamers. My test system is powered by a Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS when 1080p the ray tracing feature is activated. The impact is bigger on the more affordable RTX 2060 which slows down to 30 FPS according to NVIDIA's benchmarks. That's where the company's DLSS technology is into play. It uses AI-powered rendering to produce higher quality results from images with lower resolution. After I switched that on, Minecraft was able to be running at around 93FPS at 1080p. NVIDIA claims that it will give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU an additional 53FPS.



Performance is worse on RTX laptops that aren't as powerful as their desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that an RTX 2080 Max Q machine, similar to Acer's Triton 500 laptop, will get 57 FPS on Minecraft with ray tracing enabled and DLSS enabled. It is possible that things will be slower with RTX 2060 and 2070 machines, as this is the company's top-of-the-line mobile GPU.
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These limitations are the reason why I don't believe many games will go all-in on Ray Tracing any time in the near future. Not in the same way as we've seen with Minecraft. I'd also bet the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will also have issues managing ray tracing performance. However, it's always nice to see developers experimenting with this new technology. Don't get caught up in the rush to 4K -- we'll evaluate future games by how they use ray tracing and graphical upgrades you'll notice.


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