In August, 2019, Minecraft announced that they are implementing Real-Time Ray Tracing for Windows 10 with devices that are capable of DirectX R, such as with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. What does this mean? What is ray tracing?
Ray tracing provides realistic lighting by simulating the physical behavior of light. It calculates the path light would take from its origin, where it would reflect, refract, or be blocked, thus providing a vastly superior lighting effect to a 3D rendered scene. Until now, ray tracing has not been done in real-time, often the lighting effects of a 3D scene are “baked” onto the textures for models in a scene. But Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX GPU’s make Real-Time Ray Tracing possible!
This means mind blowing realism in lighting, which dramatically changes how a scene looks, effecting shadows, reflections, and refraction. Just take a look at this video and see for yourself how game changing this really is:
Currently only available for Windows 10 devices with DirectX R support, Microsoft’s Mojang plans to expand availability of real-time ray tracing to other platforms in the future.
For a much more in-depth look at ray tracing, take a look at this article on Nvidia’s blog; “What’s the Difference Between Ray Tracing and Rasterization?“