Minecraft with RTX: Raytracing beta starts this week

NVIDIA and Mojang Studios have been working on Minecraft with ray tracing effects for quite a while. The open beta for Windows 10 should start this week.

Minecraft players on Windows 10 can download the beta version of the free update on Thursday at 7 p.m. This offers a graphical revision with real-time ray tracing, more realistic textures and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0.

NVIDIA also provides players with six new Minecraft worlds for free download from the Minecraft Marketplace. This gives players an insight into what is possible in Minecraft with real-time ray tracing. The six new worlds can be downloaded for free from the in-game Minecraft Marketplace:

Aquatic Adventure RTX by Dr_Bond
Color, Light and Shadow RTX by PearlescentMoon
Crystal Palace RTX by GeminiTay
Imagination Island RTX from BlockWorks
Neon District RTX by Elysium Fire
Of Temples and Totems RTX by Razzleberries

NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Mojang Studios, the developers of Minecraft, add a special ray tracing feature to the Windows 10 version of the game: path tracing. This simulates the incidence of light in the entire game scene. It is a unified model for lighting calculations for many different types of effects, which have traditionally been implemented separately with rasterized or hybrid renderers. These include:

Direct lighting of the sun, sky and various light sources
Realistic hard and soft shadows
Emissive lighting of surfaces such as glow stone and lava
Global illumination
Accurate reflections in water and metallic surfaces
Transparent materials such as stained glass, water and ice with reflection and refraction
Volumetric fog and light wells

Minecraft with RTX will be offered as a free update later this year for users who own Minecraft for Windows 10. Players will need to sign up for the beta of Minecraft Windows 10 RTX on April 16 through the Xbox Insider Hub. The beta worlds can be downloaded free of charge from the Minecraft Marketplace on April 16. Players will also need a GeForce RTX 2060 graphics processor or higher and the latest NVIDIA Game Ready driver for Minecraft with RTX.

Minecraft with RTX – announcement trailer for the beta

In line with the announcement of the Windows Beta for Minecraft with RTX, i.e. NVIDIA's ray tracing, there is a trailer with the first visual impressions of the new effects.