Minecraft with RTX on Windows 10 is now available to download and play! Minecraft with RTX brings fully path-traced rendering, physically-based materials, and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 to Minecraft, delivering bleeding-edge visual fidelity and realism that can be experienced on all GeForce RTX GPUs.
To demonstrate the full capabilities of Minecraft with RTX’s new technologies, which deliver unbelievable sights with jaw-dropping, previously-impossible-to-achieve effects, we have worked with Minecrafters to create 6 stunning Creator Worlds, downloadable for free from the in-game Minecraft Marketplace.
The results of Minecraft with ray tracing are astounding – realistic hard and soft shadows are seen everywhere; global illumination realistically lights the world, with that light filling interiors through windows and gaps in the terrain; illuminated blocks and other light sources cast pixel-perfect lighting; reflections are seen on all reflective surfaces and blocks, with a level of fidelity far surpassing that of screen space reflections; light reflects, refracts and scatters through water, ice, stained glass, and other transparencies; and atmospheric effects occur naturally, resulting in high quality volumetric fog, and pixel-perfect god rays.
Ray Tracing Comes to Minecraft
Together, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, have added a form of ray tracing known as path tracing for the Windows 10 version of the game. Path tracing simulates the way light is transported throughout a scene. It presents a unified model for lighting calculations for many different types of effects that have traditionally been implemented separately using rasterized or hybrid renderers. Among these are:
- Direct lighting from the sun, sky and various light sources
- Realistic hard and soft shadows
- Emissive lighting from surfaces such as glowstone and lava
Global illumination - Accurate reflections in water and metallic surfaces
- Transparent materials such as stained glass, water and ice with reflection and refraction
- Volumetric fog and light shafts
Ray tracing was added to Minecraft using the industry-standard Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate API. NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ GPUs are the only GPUs with dedicated ray-tracing cores that allow
games to be ray traced in real time.
New Physically Based Materials System
Building blocks in Minecraft are now upgraded with material properties that emulate real life — a technique known as physically based rendering (PBR). This PBR system supports material
properties for light emission, roughness, depth and metallicity that combine with ray tracing to enable lighting effects such as reflections, refraction, translucency, transparency and global
illumination that open new possibilities and ways to create in Minecraft.
Using AI to Boost Image Quality in Minecraft
Minecraft with RTX also introduces NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 to the game. Powered by RTX Tensor Cores, DLSS 2.0 is an improved deep learning neural network that boosts frame rates while generating beautiful, sharp images for games. It provides the performance headroom — 1.7x+ faster frame rates — to power full path tracing in Minecraft with RTX.
Six Gorgeous New Minecraft Worlds to Play in, Build and Explore
To celebrate the open beta of Minecraft with RTX, NVIDIA has worked with some of the most talented Minecraft creators to make six new Minecraft worlds available to gamers that show off the dramatic possibilities that ray tracing and PBR textures bring to the game. Selected due to their fantastic track record of making captivating contributions in the Minecraft community, these creators delivered exciting results.
“What Minecraft with RTX introduces to the game can only be described as mind-blowing,” said RazzleberryFox, CEO at Razzleberries, a founding partner and industry leader on the Minecraft Marketplace. “The added dimension these incredible visuals add to Minecraft has reinvigorated our collective creativity and enabled us to create amazing new worlds and experiences for Minecraft that just were not possible before.”
The six new worlds will be downloadable for free from the in-game Minecraft Marketplace and include:
- Aquatic Adventure RTX by Dr_Bond
- Color, Light and Shadow RTX by PearlescentMoon
- Crystal Palace RTX by GeminiTay
- Imagination Island RTX by BlockWorks
- Neon District RTX by Elysium Fire
- Of Temples and Totems RTX by Razzleberries
How To Download and Play The Minecraft with RTX Beta
Microsoft and Mojang are operating the Minecraft with RTX beta via the Xbox Insider program, as they do with all other Minecraft betas, enabling them to collect and collate feedback, and automatically share updates. To join there are few steps, though it’s all easy-peasy if you follow our guide below.
First, ensure your system meets the minimum system requirements:
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, or better
- CPU: Intel Core i5, or equivalent, or better
- RAM: 8GB, or more
- Storage: 2GB (Game, plus all worlds and resource packs)
- Operating System: Windows 10 x64
Next, download and install the latest Windows 10 updates, followed by our Minecraft with RTX Game Ready Driver, which delivers day-0 optimizations and performance improvements for the beta, and is required for the use of NVIDIA DLSS 2.0. Also, ensure you own a copy of Minecraft for Windows 10, as that is needed for participation in the beta program.
