Minecraft will be getting a realistic visual update with the introduction of real-time ray tracing support. The game developers will provide the free game update to anyone with the Nvidia RTX graphics card on PC. The update will be available for the Windows 10 version within the next year.
Minecraft is the world’s best-selling video game, selling more than 176 million copies all over the world. The blocky world of Minecraft will soon be gone; and the players will get a new and improved world with vivid visualizations added to their virtual gaming world with realistic shadows, lighting and vibrant colors.
Microsoft and Nvidia announced the collaboration today at Gamescom 2019 in Cologne, Germany. The Minecraft game developer, Mojang, and Nvidia have been working on the game update to include an advanced form of ray tracing to the game. Matt Wuebbling, head of GeForce marketing at Nvidia, indicated that the players will be able to have more intense gaming experience from now on with the new ray-tracing built for the RTX cards.
Minescraft will expose ray tracing to millions of gamers of all ages and backgrounds that may not play more hardcore video games. The world’s best selling video game adding ray tracing on PC illustrates the momentum that ray tracing has built in the gaming ecosystem – By Matt Wuebbling on the Minescraft ray tracing update.
The new ray tracing update intensifies the way light moves throughout the game. The improved ray-tracing technique gives the ever-present water a new life. A touch of soft shadows adds up magic to the cave and lifts up the mode of the night. Refractions and scattering effects illuminate everything in the Minecraft world. Saxs Persson, the franchise creative director at Microsoft is confident about the future of the game.
Ray tracing sits at the center of everything of what we think is next for Minecraft… RTX gives the Minecraft world a brand new feel to it. In normal Minecraft, a block of gold just appears yellow, but with ray tracing turned on, you really get to see the specular highlight, you get to see the refection, you can even see a mob reflected on it – Saxs Persson, franchise creative director at Microsoft
Some of the major games e. g. Metro Exodus, Battlefield, Shadow of the Tomb Raider etc and some major upcoming games e. g. Watch Dogs: Legion, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare etc are already adopting the new ray-tracing support. Minecraft will also be shifting to Nvidia Turing architecture that includes ray tracing. Ray tracing is a rendering method that traces the path of light when it interacts with any objects in a scene.
The ray-tracing update will be available to the players using Nvidia 2060, 2070 or 2080 graphic cards. Nvidia also provides a line of RTX cards for gaming laptops, enabling the ray-tracing method for certain titles.
