In August last year, Mojang and Nvidia announced ray tracing support for Minecraft, coming in as a replacement for the canceled Super Duper Graphics Pack, but only for PC users. That ray tracing makeover is now almost here, with Nvidia today announcing that a public beta that will kick off on April 16.
Minecraft with RTX carries "fully path-traced rendering, physically-based materials, and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0" for a completely overhauled graphical experience, and interested players will require an Nvidia GPU with RTX capabilities to make use of the new feature set.
The beta will only offer single-player worlds to players for now, and only the Windows 10 Bedrock Edition of Minecraft is getting the upgrade. Java Edition players do have the opportunity to convert their favorite worlds over to the Minecraft with RTX-capable Bedrock version though. A handy tutorial assembled by Nvidia for this venture can be seen here.
To help mitigate the performance hit from enabling ray tracing, the addition of DLSS 2.0, the AI-enhanced upscaling technology, should be very helpful, with Nvidia saying frame rates can jump by up to 1.7x when playing at 1080p while using the feature.
Signing up to the beta can be accomplished through the Xbox Insider Hub starting on April 16 at 10AM PT. The ray tracing capabilities will be added to the regular edition of Minecraft on Windows 10 at the end of the beta as a free update.
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