Notes

Minecraft RTX: everything we Know about the Builder's next Graphical Leap

Blocky builders everywhere are experiencing major changes.



Although the highly anticipated Super Duper Graphics Pack for Minecraft was cancelled and replaced with a different official update to the blocky building game. While graphics upgrades are among the best Minecraft mods, wouldn't it be wonderful if the game could be improved to look official? That's exactly what Minecraft RTX is.



Minecraft RTX is an official Nvidia-developed patch for Minecraft that adds real-time DXR Raytracing to the Windows 10 version of the game. Nvidia describes the whole game as "refit" using path tracer. This drastically alters the ways light, reflections and shadows interact in the game engine. Because of how flexible Minecraft's procedurally generated sandboxes are they're the ideal place to play around with the technology.



If you aren't worried about fancy lighting, Minecraft is still one of the best laptop games for playing on low-spec computers.



Here's everything you need to be aware of about Minecraft RTX.



Minecraft RTX is out now



Minecraft with RTX has exited beta as of December 8th in 2020. If you have a GeForce RTX graphics card, you can give the RTX-enabled Minecraft to try for yourself.



Here are the Minecraft RTX system requirements



OS: Windows 10 64 bit GPU: DirectX hardware ray tracing-capable GPU such as NVIDIA GeForce(r), RTX 20 Series or greater and AMD Radeon (tm) RX 6000 series and above.


CPU: Intel Core i5 or equivalent


RAM: RAM >8 GB


Minecraft version: 1.16.200 or higher


How does ray tracing affect Minecraft?



We played Minecraft RTX at PAX Australia in October, and it was so great it made us want to die and be reincarnated inside Minecraft. Check out our thoughts.



Every aspect of Minecraft's appearance has been affected by Nvidia's ray tracing implementation. Lighting is the most important upgrade. By using real-time global illumination, the direction and brightness of the sun will affect all surfaces and shadows. In a game such as Minecraft in which the world's landscape can shift dramatically from moment-to-moment, it's quite an impressive improvement.



The same applies to emissive blocks such as lava and glowstones, as well as some new emissive blocks that be included in the Minecraft RTX update.



Real-time reflections will be added in the RTX update, meaning that all reflective surfaces, including glass and water, will reflect precisely the environments surrounding them. Real-time global illumination coupled with real-time reflections creates'specular reflective'. This basically means that light of any color will be visible on nearby reflective surfaces, even opaque reflective ones.



The image below provides a nice example of this: notice how the emissive and colored disco blocks are affecting the colors reflecting off the adjacent reflective surfaces in beige. It's beautiful, ain't it?



But don't just take my word for this, you must witness it in action.



Watch the official Minecraft RTX gameplay video (opens in new tab)



The above video released in conjunction with the official Minecraft RTX announcement back in August 2019. As you'll see, this video gives you a convincing reason to be excited about the update that includes footage of before and after showing the real-time global illumination and how it will truly make those glowstone blocks that emit light sing.
Game servers


A month later, Nvidia released yet another video (opens in a new tab) showing off Minecraft RTX-this time with the inclusion of its own custom-designed blocks. Most of these are emissive, or else reflective and will be included with the Minecraft RTX update.



How much will Minecraft RTX cost?



The Minecraft RTX update is free to all existing owners of the Windows 10 edition of Minecraft. Although Microsoft has confirmed (opens in new tab) that ray tracing support in Minecraft will not be limited to Nvidia cards at the time of writing, Nvidia's RTX series of cards are the most effective option to experience Minecraft RTX. And they're not at a bargain price.



Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. His work has been featured on GamesRadar+ and TechRadar as well as PLAY Magazine, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and numerous other sites. Specific interests include indie games and obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, FPSs, and other experimental games. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will be given its due critique one day.


Here's my website: https://30tt.com/