As part of gamescom 2019, Nvidia announced »Minecraft with RTX« and showed the first impressive gameplay scenes. Since then, the implementation of real-time beam calculation based on Microsoft DirectX Raytracing (DXR) has been eagerly awaited.
In order to bridge the waiting time, Nvidia, meanwhile, provides somewhat deeper insight into the technical details of the ray tracing implementation and at the same time shows first screenshots of new worlds created by selected creative minds.
Crystal Palace RTX by GeminiTay. (Image source: Nvidia)
Imagination Island RTX BlockWorks. (Image source: Nvidia)
Of Temples And Totems RTX by Razzleberries. (Image source: Nvidia)
Various ray tracing effects such as reflections, shadows and global illumination are used. In a video, Nvidia explains the structure of the real-time path tracer.
What is path tracing?
In contrast to ray tracing, in which only a few selected rays are tracked, in order to be able to represent reflections in reflecting surfaces more realistically, for example, in the rendering equation of path tracing, randomly generated rays are calculated on all surfaces.
The result is visibly more realistic global illumination. Nevertheless, path tracing also falls under the generic term ray tracing.
Interesting for developers and creators: Nvidia pays particular attention to the so-called PBR (Physically Based Rendering) textures, from which ray tracing (path tracing) should benefit. Light effects can only be correctly displayed through defined, different material properties.
In a video that was actually planned as a lecture for GTC 2020, Nvidia explains in detail how PBR works.
more on the subject
Minecraft ray tracing is said to run on RTX 2060 at 60 fps with maximum effects
When will Minecraft RTX be released?
According to Nvidia, the Minecraft RTX for Windows 10 will be released soon. However, an exact date has not yet been given.
