Notes

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

When you think of Minecraft, you probably imagine blocky graphics and simplistic textures. But the recent beta launch of ray tracing support for NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards transforms it into a completely different game. To put it simply the ray tracing feature allows more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. It's like the jump from shaky VHS tapes to HD.



I'll admit that I've not spent much time with Minecraft, though I've always regarded it as a creative tool for younger gamers. There was a reason why I didn't have the patience to play a massive unstructured game. Also, to be honest, I just never really liked the way it looked. If you plan on spending hours in a virtual environment aesthetics are crucial. This is also why I didn't like World of Warcraft. Ray tracing can completely alter the Minecraft experience -- all of a sudden , it's more immersive.



The difference is evident the first time you launch one of the six environments included in NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, all of which are created by master Minecraft builders. Aquatic Adventure's water reflections and transparency were awe-inspiring to me when I first picked playing. Similar graphic effects have been seen in big budget games like Assassin's Creed, but they always feel like an accurate representation of reality. While Minecraft's water blocks mirrored were flat and in motion it was as if you were looking at the real lake.
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The rays of sunlight also give the game the appearance of a warm glow. It's almost as if you feel the sun kiss your face. These are "god Rays,"" large-scale light scattering effects meant to evoke the way light peaks through clouds. While they may appear overused, such as the way J.J. Abrams is notorious for throwing flares onto everything and everything, watching god rays be executed in a realistic manner using ray tracing was simply breathtaking. The diffuse light appeared so natural that I couldn't believe it was real-time rendering no matter if I was in the water or not.



Although it might appear that I am excited about the stunning 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. Full tilt in Ray Tracing is something we've only presented in the past with this Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's RTX enabled Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing is similar to HDR in that it can add depth and texture to your image regardless of whether the image is rendered at 1080p or 4K. I've always found the move to 4K to be a bit foolish. That's a lot of processing power utilized to crunch more pixels, though it's not always possible to notice a huge difference as compared to 1080p or 1,440p -- especially from your couch. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd imagine that many gamers will be focusing on framerates and noticeable visual improvements such as HDR and ray tracing over 4K rendering. (But it's true that it is possible to reach all of these benchmarks eventually.



My biggest takeaway from the Minecraft RTX beta is: Realistic lighting is a huge benefit. Everything is more immersive when light comes from where it should and shadows react in a realistic way and reflections appear exactly 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 very power-hungry and unaccessible for most gamers. My test system is powered by an Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS in 1080p when ray tracing has been turned on. And the impact is greater on the less expensive RTX 2060, which drops to 30 FPS according to NVIDIA's benchmarks. This is where the company's DLSS technology is in. It utilizes 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 which aren't as powerful as desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that an RTX 2080 Max Q machine like Acer's Triton 500 laptop, will attain 57 FPS in Minecraft with ray tracing enabled and DLSS enabled. You can expect things to be slower with RTX 2060 or 2070 models because this is the company's top-of-the-line mobile GPU.



With these limitations, I don't expect many games to go all-in with Ray Tracing anytime soon- certainly not in the manner we've seen in Minecraft. I'd also wager that the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will have similar problems managing the performance of ray-tracing. It's refreshing to see developers experimenting with this new technology. Don't get caught up in the rush to 4K -- we'll evaluate future games based on how they use the ray tracer and graphic upgrades you'll see.


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