Minecraft with path tracing almost looks like Minecraft 2

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Part of the popular SEUS shader pack.

It's Minecraft, but not as we know it. The latest build of popular shader pack Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) implements path tracing, a rendering method similar to ray tracing, and the results are stunning. 

I love the way the light reflects off the floor in the first clip below, and in the second clip you can see sunlight streaming through a window. It looks better in videos than in screenshots—almost like Minecraft 2.0. Make sure you hit fullscreen on the videos for the full effect.

Naturally, getting visuals this good out of Minecraft requires a powerful set-up. Notglacier, the user that posted the videos on Twitter, said he was getting between 25 and 40 fps from a rig that includes an i9-9900k CPU and a GTX 1070 Ti. 

The latest build of SEUS is currently only available to Patreon backers, but I'm sure it won't be long until it makes it into the general release. 

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.