'Minecraft' Looks like an Entirely new Game With NVIDIA's RTX Ray Tracing



When you think of Minecraft, you probably imagine blocky graphics and simplistic textures. However, the recent launch of ray tracer support for NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards turns it into an entirely new game. Ray tracing allows for more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. It's like jumping from grainy VHS tapes into HD.



I'll admit that I've never spent a lot of time playing Minecraft although I've always regarded it as a creative tool for younger gamers. Partly because I didn't have enough patience to handle an unstructured, large-scale game. Also, I didn't like the way it looked. Aesthetics count a lot if you're spending hours in an online world (this is the reason I didn't get into World of Warcraft). Ray tracing is a fundamental change to the Minecraft experience -- all suddenly it's more immersive.



The difference is apparent the first time you load one of the six environments in NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds Pack. The six environments were created by master Minecraft builders. Aquatic Adventure's transparency and reflections in the water were stunning to me when I first started it up. We've seen similar graphical flourishes from big budget titles like the Assassin's Creed series, however, they've always felt like an approximation of real life. While Minecraft's water blocks mirrored were flat and in motion it was as if you were looking at a real lake.



The sun's rays also give the game a warm glow. It's almost as if you feel the sun kiss your face. These are "god Rays,"" volumetric light scattering effects designed to evoke the way light is reflected by clouds. While they are not a good idea to overuse for example, like the way J.J. Abrams flings lens flares at everything, it was amazing to see god rays using the ray tracer. It didn't matter if I was in the water or just looking up at trees the diffuse light was so beautiful I was awestruck that it was being rendered in real time.



Although it might sound like I am just over the moon with the gorgeous graphics after spending hours in this Minecraft beta, I am more excited than ever about how Ray Tracing is going to change the way that we play games. Remedy's Control, for example utilized ray tracing in an unorthodox way, where it worked in conjunction with traditional rendering techniques. Full tilt in ray tracing is something that we've only demoed so far with this Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's RTX enabled Quake 2 demo.



Ray tracing is similar to HDR in that it's a fresh way to add depth and texture, regardless if it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I find the rush to 4K to be a bit naive. This is quite a bit of processing power that can crunch more pixels. It's not often noticeable from your couch, but it could be a significant boost in performance when compared to 1,440p and 1080p. As monitors and TVs shift towards higher refresh rates, I'd think many gamers will prioritize frame rates and noticeable visual enhancements like HDR and ray tracing over rendering in 4K. (But it's true that it's possible to hit all of these benchmarks eventually.



My main conclusion from the Minecraft RTX beta? realistic lighting is a huge benefit. It makes everything seem more real and immersive when lighting is from the direction it is required to go, and when shadows react realistically, reflections appear as you would expect. It's the difference between feeling as if you're playing a game, and the sensation of entering a real-world virtual world.



Ray tracing is still extremely energy-intensive and is not accessible to the majority of gamers. On my test rig that is powered by a Core i7 8700K CPU and an RTX 2080 Ti, Minecraft slows down to around 53FPS at 1080p when ray tracing is turned on. The impact is even more on the less expensive RTX 2060. It's reduced to around 30 FPS according to NVIDIA benchmarks. This is where the company's DLSS technology comes in. It makes use of AI powered rendering to produce superior quality results using lower resolution images. After I switched that on, Minecraft was able to run at 93FPS in 1080p. And NVIDIA promises to give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU a boost to around 53FPS.



Performance is lower on RTX laptops that aren't as powerful as their desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that an RTX 2080 Max Q machine, similar to Acer's Triton 500 laptop, will attain 57 FPS in Minecraft with ray tracing enabled and DLSS enabled. It is possible that things will be slower on RTX 2060 or 2070 models, as it is the top of the line mobile GPU.



These limitations are the reason why I don't believe most games will be able to fully embrace Ray Tracing anytime in the near future. Not in the same way we've seen with Minecraft.Minecraft java And I'd wager the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, both of which will be running AMD's forthcoming Radeon hardware, will have similar issues managing the performance of ray tracing. But it's still pleasing to see developers playing with this new technology. Forget about the rush to 4K. We'll be judging future games based on how they incorporate Ray Tracing and other graphical improvements that you'll see.

84 Views