Nvidia is working with Microsoft on ray tracing for Minecraft

Nvidia adds RTX support to Minecraft. The game retains its blocky appearance, but ray tracing and the addition of new textures render different materials and shadows more realistic. It is not yet known when the update will be released.

The announcement from Nvidia shows that the video card maker itself adds the RTX technology to the game from Microsoft. In a video, the company shows what that will look like. Ray tracing enables realistic lighting and shadows, as well as sparkles and reflections on materials such as diamond, gold, water and ice. Such materials are given new textures to render them realistic. For example, this also faithfully reproduces the subtle reflection of light on wood in the RTX version of Minecraft.

Raytracing is coming to the Windows 10 version of Minecraft. Other versions will not benefit from the update. To see the effects, a GeForce RTX video card or a GTX video card that can handle DirectX ray tracing is required. Cards like the GTX 1060 and above are compatible with DXR, but because they don’t have dedicated cores for ray tracing, that has a big impact on performance. What hardware is needed for smooth rendering of ray tracing in Minecraft is not yet clear.

The announcement of the RTX update comes shortly after announcing that a previously announced graphics upgrade has been dropped. The Super Duper Graphics Pack announced in 2017 proved too technically demanding. That update should have ensured, among other things, that the game would run in 4k on the Xbox One X.

Nvidia announced RTX support for Minecraft at the start of gamescom. The maker of the RTX video cards also announced that Dying Light 2 will receive support for the technology. The same goes for the Metro Exodus expansion titled The Two Colonels.