Notes

'Minecraft' Looks like a whole 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 capabilities on NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards has turned it into an entirely new game. Ray tracing can provide more realistic lighting, reflections, and shadows. It's like jumping from grainy VHS tapes into HD.



I'll admit that I've not spent much time playing Minecraft although I've always considered it to be a creative tool for younger gamers. There was a reason why I didn't have the patience to handle a huge unstructured game. Also, to be honest, I just never really liked the look of it. The aesthetics are important if you're spending hours in an online world (this is also the reason why I never played World of Warcraft). But ray tracing completely changes the Minecraft experience -- all of a sudden , it's more immersive.



The difference is obvious the first time you load one of the six environments included in NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, each one of which was designed by master Minecraft builders. When I first started Aquatic Adventure I was awestruck by the reflections of the water and the clarity of crystal blocks. We've seen similar visual effects from big budget titles like the Assassin's creed series, however, they've always felt like an approximation of the real world. Minecraft's water blocks, mirrored even though they were flat and unmoving seemed a little closer to staring at an actual lake.



Then there are the rays of light which give the game an enthralling glow. It's like feeling the sun on your face. These are "god rays"" large-scale light scattering effects that are designed to evoke the way light peaks through clouds. Presta live Although they can be excessive, as in the way J.J. Abrams is notorious for throwing lens flares on everything, seeing god rays executed in a realistic manner using Ray Tracing was simply stunning. The diffuse light appeared so natural that I could not believe it was real-time rendering, regardless of whether I was in the water or not.



It could sound like I'm just talking about beautiful graphics but after spending hours playing this Minecraft beta I'm more enthusiastic than ever about how ray tracing technology will alter 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 at its best through the Minecraft beta and NVIDIA’s Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing feels similar to HDR in that it's a fresh way to add depth and texture, no matter if it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I find the rush to 4K a little naive. It's an enormous amount of processing power that can crunch more pixels. It's not always apparent from your couch, but it could be a significant increase in performance compared to 1440p and 1080p. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd think gamers to prioritize frame rates and noticeable visual enhancements like HDR and ray tracing over rendering in 4K. (But obviously, it's possible to hit all of these benchmarks eventually.



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



Unfortunately, ray tracing is still extremely power hungry and inaccessible to most gamers. On my test rig, which is powered by a Core i7 8700K CPU and an RTX 2080 Ti, Minecraft slows down to around 53FPS at 1080p when Ray Tracing is enabled. The effect is even worse on the less expensive RTX 2060. It's reduced to around 30 FPS according to NVIDIA benchmarks. This is where the company's DLSS tech is useful. It makes use of AI powered rendering to deliver superior quality results using lower resolution images. Once I flipped that on, Minecraft jumped to around 93FPS on my 1080p system. And NVIDIA promises to give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU a bump to around 53FPS.



Performance is also lower on RTX laptops which aren't as powerful as 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 for RTX 2060 or 2070 models since this is the company's top-of-the-line mobile GPU.



These limitations make me doubt that many games will go all-in on Ray Tracing anytime soon. But not in the same way as we've seen with Minecraft. I'd also wager that the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will have similar problems controlling 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 graphical enhancements that you'll be able to notice.


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