Minecraft's Super Duper Graphics Pack may have been canceled last week, but the game is still receiving a major graphics update thanks to Nvidia.
Microsoft/Mojang and Nvidia have been working together to develop a free update for Minecraft which makes for a "dramatically more realistic" experience by adding real-time ray tracing support. You'll need a Nvidia RTX graphics card to enjoy it, though.
According to Saxs Persson, franchise creative director of Minecraft at Microsoft, "Ray tracing sits at the center of what we think is next for Minecraft ... GeForce 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 reflection, you can even see a mob reflected in it."
Minecraft on Windows 10 will soon have access to "path tracing," which is a form of ray tracing allowing for many effects to be naturally simulated. The end result is Minecraft looks jaw dropping thanks to direct lighting, realistic hard and soft shadows, per-pixel emissive lighting, indirect diffuse illumination, indirect specular illumination (reflections), transparent materials, and atmospheric scattering and density. In reality, all those effects will produce a world with correct lighting allowing for volumetric fog, light shafts, realistic skies, stained glass, water, and ice, and all with reflections.
Playing Minecraft with ray tracing turned on will require a Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU ($343.17 at Amazon) and Windows 10. Nvidia is holding an invitation-only event at Gamescom 2019 this week where attendees can play the new version of the game and record their footage, so expect a number of videos to appear soon showing off how good it looks.
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