“We teamed up with Mojang Studios to bring next-generation ray tracing and AI to Minecraft and the results are truly amazing,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of gaming at Nvidia. “There is a ton of excitement from the community for
Minecraft with RTX, and we can’t wait to see what they create.”
On Thursday, at 10 a.m. PT, Minecraft players on Windows 10 can download the beta of the highly anticipated free game update, unleashing a next-generation graphical makeover that includes real-time ray tracing, more realistic materials and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0.
Nvidia will also give players six new Minecraft worlds to download for free from the
Minecraft Marketplace, allowing them to experience what is possible in
Minecraft when real-time ray tracing is applied.
“The next big evolution for Minecraft has arrived with
Minecraft with RTX,” said Saxs Persson, franchise creative director of
Minecraft at Microsoft. “The core of regular
Minecraft is building with blocks. GeForce RTX GPUs transform the
Minecraft world with a dramatically more realistic look by adding life-like lighting effects, shadows, reflections, refraction and more to the builder’s tool kit.”
Ray Tracing Comes to Minecraft
Together, Nvidia, Microsoft and Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, have added a form of ray tracing known as path tracing for the Windows 10 version of the game. Path tracing simulates the way light is transported throughout a scene. It presents a unified model for lighting calculations for many different types of effects that have traditionally been implemented separately using rasterized or hybrid renderers.
New Physically Based Materials System
Building blocks in Minecraft are now upgraded with material properties that emulate real life — a technique known as physically based rendering (PBR). This PBR system supports material properties for light emission, roughness, depth and metallicity that combine with ray tracing to enable lighting effects such as reflections, refraction, translucency, transparency and global illumination that open new possibilities and ways to create in
Minecraft.
Using AI to Boost Image Quality in Minecraft
Minecraft with RTX also introduces Nvidia DLSS 2.0 to the game. Powered by RTX Tensor Cores, DLSS 2.0 is an improved deep learning neural network that boosts frame rates while generating beautiful, sharp images for games. It provides the performance headroom — 1.7x+ faster frame rates — to power full path tracing in
Minecraft with RTX.
Six Gorgeous New Minecraft Worlds to Play in, Build and Explore
To celebrate the open beta of Minecraft with RTX, Nvidia has worked with some of the most talented
Minecraft creators to make six new
Minecraft worlds available to gamers that show off the dramatic possibilities that ray tracing and PBR textures bring to the game. Selected due to their fantastic track record of making captivating contributions in the
Minecraft community, these creators delivered exciting results.
The six new worlds will be downloadable for free from the in-game Minecraft Marketplace and include:
Aquatic Adventure RTX by Dr_Bond
Color, Light and Shadow RTX by PearlescentMoon
Crystal Palace RTX by GeminiTay
Imagination Island RTX by BlockWorks
Neon District RTX by Elysium Fire
Of Temples and Totems RTX by Razzleberries
Minecraft with RTX will come as a free update later this year to users that own
Minecraft on Windows 10. Players will need to sign up for the
Minecraft Windows 10 RTX beta through the Xbox Insider Hub on April 16. The beta worlds will be downloadable for free from the
Minecraft Marketplace on April 16.