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

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

Although I'm forced to admit that I've not spent a lot of time with Minecraft however, I am a fan of it as a fun tool for kids. 35eng It was partly because I didn't have enough patience to play an unstructured, large-scale game. Also, I didn't like how it looked. The aesthetics matter a lot when you're going to be spending hours in the virtual world (this is the reason I didn't get into World of Warcraft). Ray tracing makes Minecraft more immersive.

The difference is evident the first time you load up one of the six environments that comprise NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, all of which were created by master Minecraft builders. When I first started Aquatic Adventure I was stunned by the reflections of water and the clarity of crystal blocks. We've seen similar visual effects from big budget titles such as the Assassin's creed series, but they've always felt like an approximate representation of the real world. Minecraft's water blocks, mirrored although flat and immobile seemed a little closer to looking at an actual lake.

The rays of sunlight also provide the game with the appearance of a warm glow. It's almost like feeling the sun's rays on your face. These are volumetric light scattering effects that mimic the way that sunlight shines through clouds. Although they can be overused for example, like the way J.J. Abrams flings lens flares at everything, it was amazing to witness god rays through ray tracing. The diffuse light was so natural that I was unable to believe it was real-time rendering, no matter if I was in the water or not.

Although it could appear that I am giddy about the beautiful graphics after having spent hours in the Minecraft beta I am more enthusiastic than ever about how Ray Tracing will alter the way we experience games. Remedy's Control, for example utilized ray tracing in an unorthodox way, where it worked in conjunction with traditional rendering techniques. Going full tilt in ray tracing is something that 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's a new method to add depth and texture, regardless whether it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I've always found the rush to 4K to be a bit reckless. That's an enormous amount of processing power utilized to crunch more pixels, though you may not notice a huge difference compared to 1,440p or 1080p -- especially from your couch. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd expect that many gamers will put more emphasis on framerates and noticeable visual improvements such as HDR and ray tracing above 4K rendering. (But of course, the ultimate goal is to hit all of those benchmarks at some point.)

My main takeaway from the Minecraft RTX beta? realistic lighting is a huge help. It makes everything appear more real and immersive when light comes from the place it's needed to, when shadows respond in a realistic way, and reflections appear like you'd expect. It's the difference between feeling like you're playing a video game, and feeling like you're in an actual world.

Unfortunately Ray tracing is incredibly power hungry, and inaccessible to most gamers. My test rig is powered by a Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS at 1080p when the ray tracing feature is turned on. And the hit is even 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 comes in. It uses AI powered rendering to produce better quality results from lower resolution images. After I switched that on, Minecraft was able to run at 93FPS in 1080p. NVIDIA promises to give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU an additional 53FPS.

Performance is worse on RTX laptops which aren't as powerful as their desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that its RTX 2080 Max-Q machine like Acer's Triton 500, will hit 57 FPS in Minecraft with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. You can expect things to be slower with RTX 2060 or 2070 machines because this is the top-of-the-line mobile GPU.

With these limitations, I don't think that many games to fully embrace Ray Tracing anytime sooncertainly not in the manner we've seen in Minecraft. I'd also bet the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will face similar issues managing the performance of ray-tracing. It's enjoyable to see developers experiment with this new technology. Don't get caught up in the rush to 4K. We'll be judging future games based on how they incorporate Ray Tracing and other graphical upgrades that you'll actually see.

[mohamedgram84]

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

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

Although I'm forced to admit that I've not spent a lot of time with Minecraft however, I am a fan of it as a fun tool for kids. 35eng It was partly because I didn't have enough patience to play an unstructured, large-scale game. Also, I didn't like how it looked. The aesthetics matter a lot when you're going to be spending hours in the virtual world (this is the reason I didn't get into World of Warcraft). Ray tracing makes Minecraft more immersive.

The difference is evident the first time you load up one of the six environments that comprise NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, all of which were created by master Minecraft builders. When I first started Aquatic Adventure I was stunned by the reflections of water and the clarity of crystal blocks. We've seen similar visual effects from big budget titles such as the Assassin's creed series, but they've always felt like an approximate representation of the real world. Minecraft's water blocks, mirrored although flat and immobile seemed a little closer to looking at an actual lake.

The rays of sunlight also provide the game with the appearance of a warm glow. It's almost like feeling the sun's rays on your face. These are volumetric light scattering effects that mimic the way that sunlight shines through clouds. Although they can be overused for example, like the way J.J. Abrams flings lens flares at everything, it was amazing to witness god rays through ray tracing. The diffuse light was so natural that I was unable to believe it was real-time rendering, no matter if I was in the water or not.

Although it could appear that I am giddy about the beautiful graphics after having spent hours in the Minecraft beta I am more enthusiastic than ever about how Ray Tracing will alter the way we experience games. Remedy's Control, for example utilized ray tracing in an unorthodox way, where it worked in conjunction with traditional rendering techniques. Going full tilt in ray tracing is something that 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's a new method to add depth and texture, regardless whether it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I've always found the rush to 4K to be a bit reckless. That's an enormous amount of processing power utilized to crunch more pixels, though you may not notice a huge difference compared to 1,440p or 1080p -- especially from your couch. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd expect that many gamers will put more emphasis on framerates and noticeable visual improvements such as HDR and ray tracing above 4K rendering. (But of course, the ultimate goal is to hit all of those benchmarks at some point.)

My main takeaway from the Minecraft RTX beta? realistic lighting is a huge help. It makes everything appear more real and immersive when light comes from the place it's needed to, when shadows respond in a realistic way, and reflections appear like you'd expect. It's the difference between feeling like you're playing a video game, and feeling like you're in an actual world.

Unfortunately Ray tracing is incredibly power hungry, and inaccessible to most gamers. My test rig is powered by a Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53 FPS at 1080p when the ray tracing feature is turned on. And the hit is even 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 comes in. It uses AI powered rendering to produce better quality results from lower resolution images. After I switched that on, Minecraft was able to run at 93FPS in 1080p. NVIDIA promises to give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU an additional 53FPS.

Performance is worse on RTX laptops which aren't as powerful as their desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that its RTX 2080 Max-Q machine like Acer's Triton 500, will hit 57 FPS in Minecraft with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. You can expect things to be slower with RTX 2060 or 2070 machines because this is the top-of-the-line mobile GPU.

With these limitations, I don't think that many games to fully embrace Ray Tracing anytime sooncertainly not in the manner we've seen in Minecraft. I'd also bet the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will face similar issues managing the performance of ray-tracing. It's enjoyable to see developers experiment with this new technology. Don't get caught up in the rush to 4K. We'll be judging future games based on how they incorporate Ray Tracing and other graphical upgrades that you'll actually see.