Minecraft RTX: Everything we know about the builder's next graphical leap

Minecraft RTX on — (Image credit: Mojang, Nvidia)

Even though the much anticipated Super Duper Graphics Pack for Minecraft was cancelled, there's now a different official graphical update for the blocky building game. While graphical upgrades are among the best Minecraft mods, wouldn't it be nice if the game was made to look officially prettier? Well, that's what Minecraft RTX is.

Minecraft RTX is an official Nvidia-developed patch for Minecraft adding real-time DXR raytracing to the Windows 10 version of the game. The whole game is, in Nvidia's words, "refit" with path tracing, which dramatically affects the way light, reflections and shadows work inside the game engine. Given how malleable Minecraft's procedurally generated sandboxes are, it's the perfect playground to experiment with the technology.

If you aren't worried about fancy lighting, Minecraft is still one of the best laptop games for playing on low-spec machines.

Here's everything you need to know about Minecraft RTX.

Minecraft RTX is out now

Minecraft with RTX has exited beta as of December 8th, 2020. If you have a GeForce RTX graphics card you can give the RTX-enabled Minecraft a go yourself.

Here are the Minecraft RTX system requirements

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
GPU: DirectX hardware ray tracing capable GPU like NVIDIA GeForce® RTX 20 Series and higher, and AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series and higher
CPU: Intel Core i5 or equivalent
RAM: >8 GB of RAM
Minecraft version: 1.16.200 or higher

How does ray tracing change Minecraft?

Hands-on with Minecraft RTX

We played Minecraft RTX at PAX Australia in October, and it was so good it wanted us to die and be reincarnated inside Minecraft. Read our impressions.

Nearly every aspect of Minecraft's appearance is affected by Nvidia's ray tracing implementation. Lighting is the biggest upgrade: taking advantage of real-time global illumination, the direction of the sun affects the brightness of all surfaces and the direction of all shadows. In a game like Minecraft, where the world can change dramatically from moment-to-moment, it's quite a remarkable upgrade.

The same rule applies to emissive blocks, such as lava and glowstones, as well as some new emissive blocks that will come bundled with the Minecraft RTX update.

Real-time reflections will also be added in the RTX update, meaning all reflective surfaces, including glass and water, will reflect precisely the environments around them. The combination of real-time global illumination and real-time reflections also results in 'specular reflectivity', which basically means light of any colour will be evident on nearby reflective surfaces—even opaque ones.

The image below provides a nice example of this: notice how the coloured, emissive disco blocks are affecting the colours reflected in the adjoining beige reflective surfaces. It's beautiful, ain't it?

But don't take my word for it, you need to see it in action.

Watch the official Minecraft RTX gameplay video

The above video released in concert with the official Minecraft RTX announcement back in August 2019. As you'll see, the video provides a pretty compelling reason to excited about the update, with before and after footage showing off real-time global illumination, and how the implementation will really make those emissive glowstone blocks sing.

A month later, Nvidia released yet another video showing off Minecraft RTX—this time with the addition of its own custom-made blocks. Most of these are emissive blocks, or else reflective, and will come bundled with the Minecraft RTX update.

How much will Minecraft RTX cost?

The Minecraft RTX update will be free-of-charge to all existing owners of the Windows 10 edition of Minecraft. While Microsoft has confirmed that ray tracing support in Minecraft will not be exclusive to Nvidia cards, at the time of writing Nvidia's RTX series of cards will be the best way to experience Minecraft RTX—and they don't come cheap.

PRODUCTS

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.