Microsoft is partnering with NVIDIA to bring the power ray tracing to Minecraft via its GeForce platform. This thing may be good news for you. Now, it is available via Minecraft for Windows 10 in beta and the update allows official real-time ray tracing, promising advances to lighting, shadows and more.
With this ray tracing support, you are able to enjoy substantial improvements in lighting and shadows for heightened visual fidelity. Ray tracing will calculate the color of pixels by tracing the path that light will take if it was to travel from the eye of the viewer through the virtual 3D scene. The light may be able to reflect from one object to another, be blocked by objects or pass through transparents. These interactions are combined to produce the final color of a pixel that can be displayed on the screen.
How to play the Minecraft RTX beta? You are able to follow the steps below.
- The first thing that you have to do is to install Minecraft for Windows 10 via the Microsoft Store.
- After that, you also have to install the Xbox Insider Hub app via the Microsoft Store.
- Then, you have to open the Xbox Insider Hub app.
- Then, you need to click the Insider content tab on the left-hand menu.
- Now, you have to click the Minecraft for Windows 10 tile.
- In this step, you have to click Join.
- You have to choose the Minecraft for Windows 10 RTX Beta. It is important for you to know that ray tracing is not available via the standard “Minecraft for Windows 10” beta option.
- Now, you have to click Accept and then Minecraft will automatically install the RTX Beta build via the Microsoft Store.
- If it has been installed, the RTX is enabled via the Minecraft for Windows 10 application.
You are able to enable and disable Minecraft RTX ray tracing on the fly, via Settings > Advanced Video > DirectX Ray Tracing or you are able to do it by using the semicolon on your keyboard (;) as a hotkey.
You are able to watch some videos on Youtube about Nvidia Ray Tracing Minecraft. Here are some videos that you are able to watch.
- A video of NVIDIA GeForce entitled Minecraft with RTX | Official GeForce RTX Ray Tracing Reveal Trailer which was uploaded on August 19th, 2019.
- NVIDIA GeForce entitled Minecraft with NVIDIA RTX | Creators Ray Tracing Showcase which was uploaded on December 17th, 2019.
- A video of Minecraft entitled Announcing The Minecraft with RTX for Windows 10 Beta which was uploaded on April 16th, 2020.
- A video of NVIDIA GeForce entitled Minecraft with RTX | Official GeForce RTX Ray Tracing with HD Textures Reveal Trailer which was uploaded on August 20th, 2019.
It is important to know that since Minecraft’s RTX beta is still in the early stages, Microsoft has limited which worlds support its ray tracing solution. From the initial RTX beta launch, it is known that ray tracing is only supported via “RTX-enabled” worlds from the Minecraft Marketplace. Or, it can be supported by using your own ray tracing-capable resource pack.
If you want to experience ray tracing, you are able to download a free RTX enabled world from the Marketplace. Or, you are able to create your own textures that make use of the physically based rendering system and sideload them into the game.
