Minecraft Looks Like A Completely New Game Using NVIDIAs RTX Ray Tracing
When you think of Minecraft, you probably imagine blocky graphics and simplistic textures. However, the recent beta launch of ray tracing capabilities for NVIDIA's RTX graphics card transforms it into an entirely new game. Simply put the ray tracing feature allows more realistic lighting, reflections and shadows. It's like jumping from shaky VHS tapes into HD.
I'll admit that I've not spent much time with Minecraft, though I've always considered it to be an excellent tool for young gamers. It was partly because I did not have the patience to handle a huge unstructured game. And, to be honest, I just never really liked the appearance of the game. Aesthetics count a lot if you're planning to spend 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 of a sudden , it's more immersive.
The difference is evident the first time you load one of the six environments in NVIDIA's Ray Tracing Worlds pack, each one of which was designed by master Minecraft builders. Aquatic Adventure's water reflections and transparency impressed me when I first started playing. Similar graphic effects have been seen in big budget games like Assassin's Creed, however they always feel like an approximate of reality. Although Minecraft's mirrored water blocks were flat and in motion it felt as if you were looking at a real lake.
Then there are the rays of light which shower the game in the warm glow. You can almost feel the sun on your face. These are volumetric light scattering effects that mimic the way sunlight shines through clouds. While they are not a good idea to overuse, such as the way J.J. freddy's blog Abrams flings lens flares at all things, it was fascinating to witness god rays through the ray tracer. The diffuse light looked so natural that I couldn't believe that it was real-time rendering regardless of whether I was underwater.
It could seem like I'm just talking about beautiful graphics however, after spending hours in this Minecraft beta, I'm more excited than ever before about how ray tracing will change the way we experience games. Remedy's Control, for example, used ray tracing in an unorthodox way, where it worked alongside traditional rendering techniques. Ray tracing has been seen in its most complete form using the Minecraft beta and NVIDIA's Quake 2 demo.
Ray tracing has a similar feel to HDR in that it's a new way to add depth and texture, no matter whether it's rendered in 1080p or 4K. I find the rush to 4K to be a bit naive. This is a lot of processing power that can crunch more pixels. It's rarely noticeable from your couch, but it can be a significant improvement in performance when compared to 1440p and 1080p. As TVs and monitors move towards higher refresh rates, I'd expect many gamers will prioritize framerates and noticeable visual upgrades such as HDR and ray tracing above rendering in 4K. (But it's true that it is possible to reach all of these benchmarks eventually.
My biggest takeaway from the Minecraft RTX beta? Realistic lighting is a big help. It's more immersive when light comes from where it should, when shadows behave in a realistic manner, and reflections appear as you expect. It's the difference between feeling like the game you play and being in a virtual world.
Ray tracing remains extremely power-hungry and unaccessible for most gamers. My test setup is powered by an Core i7 8700K processor and an RTX2080 Ti. Minecraft slows down to 53FPS with ray tracing enabled. The hit is even greater for the less expensive RTX 2060. It drops to around 30 FPS according to NVIDIA benchmarks. This is where the company's DLSS tech comes into play. It makes use of AI powered rendering to deliver higher quality results from lower-resolution images. When I turned it on, Minecraft was able to be running at around 93FPS at 1080p. NVIDIA promises to give the struggling RTX 2060 GPU an extra 53FPS.
Performance is worse on RTX laptops, which aren't as powerful as desktop counterparts. NVIDIA claims that an RTX 2080 Max-Q laptop, like Acer's Triton 500, will hit 57 FPS in Minecraft with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. Expect things to be slower with RTX 2060 and 2070 machines, as this is the company's top-of-the-line mobile GPU.
These limitations mean that I don't think many games will be able to fully embrace Ray Tracing anytime in the near future. However, not in the same way we've seen with Minecraft. I'd also bet the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will have similar problems managing the performance of ray-tracing. However, it's always enjoyable to see developers experiment with this new technology. Don't get caught up in the rush to 4K, we'll be judging future games based on how they use graphics and ray tracing you'll actually notice.
