UPDATE 20/4/20 2:00pm: What better way to learn more about Minecraft RTX than meeting up with key developers behind the game itself and discussing the work they did in transforming the game with the power of hardware accelerated ray tracing?
In this Digital Foundry video special, Alex Battaglia takes a tour of the Minecraft RTX beta with the people that created it. You’ll get to see more of the stunning effects that Minecraft RTX has to offer, how the game has evolved since its Gamescom 2019 debut and the plans the team has in pushing quality and fidelity still further.
Many thanks to the Nvidia staff who participated in this video – Oli Wright, Jakub Boksansky and Paula Jukarainen (developer technology engineers at Nvidia) and Jaakko Haapasalo (producer, GeForce titles).
Original story: Users of Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards are in for a treat today: a beta version of the fully path-traced version of Minecraft is available, giving users unfettered access to a version of the game running under the DirectX ray tracing API. In combination with the launch, key Minecraft creators have teamed up with Nvidia to showcase path tracing to spectacular effect, with six bespoke maps available to download from the Minecraft marketplace. On top of that, this release also sees the debut of physically based materials. Downloading any one of the creator maps released today automatically adds these textures into the game, but users can also create their own materials and ‘side-load’ them into the game.