Minecraft to Get NVIDIA RTX Ray-tracing Support

[btarunr]

Minecraft is the perfect gaming paradox. It's a stupidly-popular title, but with simple graphics that can run on practically any Windows machine, but supports the latest 3D graphics APIs such as DirectX 12. The title now adds another feather to its technical feature-set cap, with support for NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing. RTX will now be used to render realistic light shafts using path-tracing, global illumination, shadows, ambient occlusion, and simple reflections. "Ray tracing sits at the center of what we think is next for Minecraft," said Saxs Persson, Franchise Creative Director of Minecraft at Microsoft. "RTX gives the Minecraft world a brand-new feel to it. In normal Minecraft, a block of gold just appears yellow, but with ray tracing turned on, you really get to see the specular highlight, you get to see the reflection, you can even see a mob reflected in it."

NVIDIA and Microsoft are yet to put out a release date on this feature update. It remains to be seen how hardcore crafters take this feature. Looking at images 1 and 2 (below), we can see that the added global illumination / bloom blurs out objects in the distance. This gives crafters the impression that the draw-distance is somehow affected. Crafters demand the highest possible draw-distance, with nothing blurring their view. We can't wait to try this out ourselves to see how RTX affects very-large crafting.



A video presentation by NVIDIA follows.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Vayra86]

Meanwhile, graphics improvements for Minecraft are cancelled because 'its not feasible'

Minecraft Super Duper 4K graphics pack: Delay, pricing, and more (update)

Where is Microsoft's long-awaited 4K update for Minecraft? Here's what we know (so far).

www.windowscentral.com

But this is certainly going to fly, mhm

 

[londiste]

Meanwhile, graphics improvements are cancelled because 'its not feasible'
But this is going to fly, mhm

Sure it will. Pretty sure Nvidia pays for it

More seriously though, lighting engine is probably separate enough from the rest so that overhauling it can be done without touching anything else. This also requires no reworking of art and other assets that would be time-consuming and costly.

 

[PLSG08]

NGL, i see this as something good. With the amount of shader mods Minecraft had it was only time until RTX happened. Would be cool to see the performance difference of Minecraft Running of Shaders vs RTX.

This might help sales of RTX go up for younger audiences. I remember back then when I was buying PC parts that a kid was in the store with his mom and they bought him a 1080 Ti no questions asked. Now kids have a valid excuse for buying the fancy RTX moniker haha.

As much as I'm against Nvidia pushing the whole RTX thing towards everyone, its a nice step forward for rendering stuff in games.

 

[Xuper]

If you want to feel a good Hype, Then buy at least 2080Ti and Enjoy RTX tech in Minecraft.

ps : Whatever you disagree , Don't bother to reply !

 

[LocutusH]

Might even get stable 60fps as first title, with 2080ti in 1080p now

 

[Vayra86]

Sure it will. Pretty sure Nvidia pays for it

More seriously though, lighting engine is probably separate enough from the rest so that overhauling it can be done without touching anything else. This also requires no reworking of art and other assets that would be time-consuming and costly.

I was dead serious, and the lighting engine being separate... wouldn't be too sure of that.

"Some of you might remember us announcing the Super Duper Graphics Pack during E3 2017. Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned. [...] we aren't happy with how the pack performed across devices. For this reason, we're stopping development on the pack and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look. "

Minecraft 'Super Duper Graphics Pack' canceled, didn't perform well across devices

That's quite disappointing.

www.windowscentral.com

So, this is that new look. I think for now we can safely say its a new attempt more than anything, and its going to cripple GPUs. And note, its not like they didn't try hard on Super Duper, they just found the engine was too archaic to get it done.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Meanwhile. Jensen thinks its crazy to buy a gpu without RTX

 

[btarunr]

Meanwhile. Jensen thinks its crazy to buy a gpu without RTX

A bulk of his revenues comes from selling non-RTX GPUs, namely the GTX 16-series.

Sure, they have DXR over shaders, but unplayable. It's a tickbox feature at best.

 

[londiste]

I think for now we can safely say its a new attempt more than anything, and its going to cripple GPUs.

Baseline for performance comparisons should probably be the RT shaders in SEUS pack which do not perform too well either. Although I am sure Nvidia will make things fuzzy with more and different effects to avoid direct comparisons. Another, lighter, point of comparison between RTX and GTX cards that leverages DXR would be cool either way.

The guy who made RT shaders said in an interview that Minecraft is a nice starting point for RT because the game assets translate well to BVH which makes some parts of RT implementation easier. I would assume its thanks to big blocks instead of more complex shapes

 

[Chomiq]

This is how NVidia will make their billions, we all know how kids are and soon you'll be labeled as "poor" unless you have RTX ON in Minecraft. They just need to enable it in Fortnite and they're set.

 

[londiste]

This is how NVidia will make their billions, we all know how kids are and soon you'll be labeled as "poor" unless you have RTX ON in Minecraft. They just need to enable it in Fortnite and they're set.

You know, Unreal Engine 4 did add RTX support in 4.22. So Epic quite literally only needs to enable it.

 

[Xzibit]

No-one is going to mention the differences in the L.O.Ds ? Look at RTX pay no attention that we increased the L.O.D. of the world between OFF and ON.

They should of showed the new LOD world with the updated textures with RTX off then on

 

[londiste]

Not LOD as such. They seem to have added normal and specular maps to textures.

 

[Aquinus]

Meanwhile, graphics improvements for Minecraft are cancelled because 'its not feasible'

Didn't you hear? RTX "just works".

 

[aQi]

RTX on Minecraft? You got to be serious.
The best i wanted to see with ray tracing support was need for speed heat.

Or we can just go Mario RTX ?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

At the same time, there are a lot of community made HD texture overhaul packs that look really really good. while RTX can change the lighting. HD texture packs do a lot more and for the most part, they are FREE. you dont need to pay any Nvidia tax to be able to use them or get them running.

I see this as Nvidia kinda using Minecraft like Facebook for advertising/marketing. Almost everyone has an FB account and even if some people have adblocker - there are still a lot of people that dont. They would of still gotten their fair share of clicks and ad-time.

Company Executive: "we need to come up with ideas on how to shift/sell more RTX cards"

Unknown guy: "lets...lets pay Microsoft a shit tonne of money to push RTX out on minecraft..." *while he points to PcGamers article about 'more than' 176million minecraft players*

Company Executive: *Takes glasses off* "MOTHER OF GOD....ITS BASICALLY FREE ADVERTISING"

 

[laszlo]

when super mario will have rtx i'll buy one card ...

 

[stimpy88]

Wow, I can't wait to play this at 10FPS on my 2070...

 

[HimymCZe]

except you can do this with shaders; WITHOUT RTX card for like a year now...

 

[dorsetknob]

Waiting like many others for RTX to come to VR PORN ya dont need /want fast framerates for that (well not till the end

 

[rutra80]

All these features could/should be implemented with more efficient techniques like normal/bump mapping, (volumetric?) shadow mapping, screenspace/planar reflections, etc. Beside marketing stuff, what perhaps is suitable for them, is voxel nature of Minecraft - maybe they can limit tracing to huge voxels, plus it is guaranteed that space close to camera has relatively few and huge polygons.
Those 1000$ cards are useful only for simple geometry like old Quake and Minecraft and that's what they're targeting.

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Wow, this is really funny...

2080ti to get enough fps for Minecraft...

We've gone full circle on this one...

 

[Mistral]

That's one game which completely deserves is. Not to mention, in it the current RTX cards should be able to manage 60fps... so that's good.

 

[Divide Overflow]

What's next, RTX for Minesweeper and Solitaire?