Minecraft: Vibrant Visuals transforms the game into what you always imagined in your head

At Minecraft Live we received a look at the future of Minecraft In the form of living pictures – an upgrade that changes the way players experience the game. To come later this year Minecraft: DOMATION EDITION On selected platforms, living graphics give the game a huge visual thrust and add improved graphic elements such as direction lighting, volumetric fog and much more – and will be available as a simple menu switch so that you can switch between the old and new appearance.

The Mojang team has a perfect way to summarize its intentions – living visuals should cause how Minecraft Look into your head. This is not a total conversion, or a handbrake becomes a new visual style, but into a deepening of MinecraftLook iconic.

Art Director Jasper Boerstra led the project and explained that everything started how the community approached Minecraft: “Living pictures were inspired by the streamers. When I thought about this project, I saw streamer built to see how people play with shaders and how they react to them. Effect for players.”

I was lucky enough to visit the Mojang Studios in Stockholm to see living pictures in action, and this outstanding philosophy is from the moment I fall into one of two cards that were specially created to show the large amount of work that came into the creation of living pictures. It is one thing to see it in screenshots or trailers, but you really cannot understand the effect of living pictures without playing the game yourself.

On the first of these cards I load into a cave and look at a staircase to a sunset sky. Light flows in from the outside and collects the edges of the stone walls, vines, the twisting shadows cut as the weak glow -sausage lazy dancing light basin around water blocks around me. As I leave the cave, I have a mountainous desert, the low sun, which throws long shadows over the landscape. It is an atmosphere, these vanilla Minecraft never had before.

When I switch to the second card, I'm suddenly in a green valley at the height of the afternoon. Sunshine plays the gaps in cherry flower trees and falling petals (added to the spring -Life -Life game) have thrown their own fluttering shadows around me. I immerse yourself in a nearby pool and realize that light even plays a role here, golden sun rays that blow their way through the water. Each single block is touched by the change – you can see how light interacts everythingeven over the back of the wild animals living here.

Boerstra explained more about it Minecraft-DeD take on a modern look: “If you play, you will find that the shadows in the game are pixelated. All reflections are also pixelated. If you drop an object and throw the sun on it, it is also pixed. We wanted to keep it Minecraft-y and lively visuals are a great way to bridge known elements with new functions. It is about adding something to the world that feels urgently and remains true to the essence of the game. “

Perhaps the greatest evidence of how successfully these improved graphics have been implemented is that I quickly forget everything about them. It is not so overwhelming shift that I have constantly reminded that this is a brand new look-it feels perfectly absorbed and keeps everything you know Minecraft. In fact, the most incredible part of the demonstration when I started to change a single hotkey between the old look and the new back and forth.

In the original look, the mountain ranges surrounded me like the huge blocks that they are – but with living pictures, volumetric fogfects mean that they disappear in an haze and offer the map a feeling of depth. It's not just that it looks better, it feels greaterAdd the world around you a new feeling for scales and secret.

And this is just the beginning for living pictures. This is not a one-and-doner moment for Mojang, but the beginning of a constant effort to improve what Minecraft Can look like without giving up without its characteristic atmosphere.

“Living pictures are not the end; it is the beginning of our trip,” explains the executive producer Ingela Garneij. “We would like to continue to work on adding further visual updates because our goal is to achieve players via platforms with responsive graphics. We will continue to build on these functions and at the same time what is doing Minecraft'S art style that is so special and loved by our community. ” – –

It is also presented as as option For players – and not just in the fact that you can switch to the original look at any time. Living pictures are planned for Minecraft: Java Edition In the future, but this does not mean an end at community-created visual mods or RTX-capable cards. Vibrant Visuals is presented as a new way for a whole new group of players to improve the appearance of the game without the more detailed work that it can require.

The advantage for us, the players, is clear – for long -term fans this is Minecraft develop further to meet your fantasies. For new players, it helps to modernize the game without ever losing what it made special. For all these players, access to living graphics is as easy as downloading the update.

We are used to this Minecraft Increasing the extent by content – new blocks, new mobs, new mechanics – that it is fascinating that the team is pursuing a completely different approach here. Lively graphics don't just feel like a new look for the game – it feels like a new dawn.

Living pictures will later arrive free of charge in Minecraft: DRENDOCK EDITION this year.