Digital Foundry: Minecraft NEW Ray Tracing RTX Mode Hands-On And Tested In Depth!

[ILikeFeet]

title is from the video, by the way

We've put Sonic Ether's Minecraft ray tracing mod through its paces in the past, but now Mojang is in the process of adding its own official support - with truly glorious results. Join Alex and John as they play through a Gamescom build showing the benefits of the technology.

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this is a pretty long and in-depth look at the official path tracer for Minecraft. also, stay for Dictator gush about how the ray tracing works

 

[Falchion]

God that looks beautiful.

 

[space_nut]

You know this will be on the next Xbox minecraft edition :)

 

[8byte]

The bloom seems a bit heavy, but the outdoor environments looked pretty good.

 

[zedox]

Best game to show off what raytracing is all about. Looking forward to games having this next generation. Minecraft also looks ridiculously good with it on.

 

[Gundam]

The camera obscura thing is so fucking cool

 

[ILikeFeet]

You know this will be on the next Xbox minecraft edition :)

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indeed, though I wonder if it will use Nvidia's work, or something else. then again, Nvidia probably made it according to DXR spec and not some custom RTX solution

 

[Neoxon]

Holy shit, it's legit amazing how much lighting can do for a game. I can't wait for ray-tracing to become more commonplace.

 

[jelly]

I get the feeling that delayed super duper graphics update is getting some ray-tracing love and more for next gen.

A lot of it looks lovely but Inwonder how far they would go because materials look way different even if it's more realistic perhaps, would that clash with what people know.

 

[FoolsMilky]

After I saw the SonicEther video I was really excited for this Ray Tracing, but the small videos and pictures Microsoft put out the last few days for this solution gave me the smallest bit of doubt.

Now that we can see it in full effect, I'm fully convinced. I mean some of those shots are insane looking. I really hope they indeed release it this year.

Thank you DigitalFoundryfor doing this video, your commentary is appreciated as always, and I'm excited to see/hear more.

 

[Sibylus]

I get the feeling that delayed super duper graphics update is getting some ray-tracing love and more for next gen.

A lot of it looks lovely but Inwonder how far they would go because materials look way different even if it's more realistic perhaps, would that clash with what people know.

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This is what MS are doing in lieu of the super duper graphics pack, which seems sound looking at what they're getting out of their new render backend and RTX support.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I get the feeling that delayed super duper graphics update is getting some ray-tracing love and more for next gen.

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the graphics update was canned

 

[starblue]

There is release date ? I cant wait to try it on my 2070S

 

[LazyLain]

Great video, looks absolutely insane.

 

[Komo]

After I saw the SonicEther video I was really excited for this Ray Tracing, but the small videos and pictures Microsoft put out the last few days for this solution gave me the smallest bit of doubt.

Now that we can see it in full effect, I'm fully convinced. I mean some of those shots are insane looking. I really hope they indeed release it this year.

Thank you DigitalFoundryfor doing this video, your commentary is appreciated as always, and I'm excited to see/hear more.

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This is also another good video showcasing a bunch of other Shader mods for the Java Edition of Minecraft. Personally I use SEUS, and it makes minecraft look honestly like a different game. The water looks better then most games I've played recently.

 

[maximumzero]

It's neat but I can't help but feel like it really ruins the bright, vibrant colors of Minecraft's aesthetic.

It's like those hideous "Unreal Fan Remakes" of classic videogames.

But I'll likely be in the minority with such an opinion.

 

[FoolsMilky]

This is also another good video showcasing a bunch of other Shader mods for the Java Edition of Minecraft. Personally I use SEUS, and it makes minecraft look honestly like a different game. The water looks better then most games I've played recently.

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Thanks for that video, I may have to check out some shaders while I'm waiting for this to come out.

I really like the things that shaders do, but I think the thing that impresses me the most is ray tracing itself. I like all the small rooms with colored lighting effects and the way light rays shoot into things.

I've always liked Shaders for how impressive they make water look specifically, but other than that I think I'm most excited about is that almost indescribable "It just looks real" kind of lighting that DF have touched on in their videos and (hopefully) Ray Tracing provides for even better in the future.

 

[capitalCORN]

1 minute in and the lighting granularity is off the walls.

It's neat but I can't help but feel like it really ruins the bright, vibrant colors of Minecraft's aesthetic.

It's like those hideous "Unreal Fan Remakes" of classic videogames.

But I'll likely be in the minority with such an opinion.

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Rather than focus on the 'result', focus on the behaviour.

 

[Komo]

I've always liked Shaders for how impressive they make water look specifically, but other than that I think I'm most excited about is that almost indescribable "It just looks real" kind of lighting that DF have touched on in their videos and (hopefully) Ray Tracing provides for even better in the future.

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Yeah with SEUS I really feel that way. It has GI, and you can enable lightshafts on it.

 

[MouldyK]

More info about the Tech in this Thread, with comments from Dictator and AndyBNV: Minecraft News: Render dragon and NVIDIA ray tracing (A new engine and a new way to experience Minecraft! )

 

[Antitype]

Bloom aside, it looks awesome. It's funny how the best RT showcases are old/lo-fi games. None of the AAA that implemented it so far convinced me otherwise, but yeah here it's a real game changer.

 

[RCSI]

The camera obscura scene sold me on this implementation.

 

[ApeEscaper]

What is the recommended GPU with raytracing to play Minecraft with RTX on at 1080p 60fps? Including in splitscreens, RTX 2060 enough?

 

[btags]

Bloom aside, it looks awesome. It's funny how the best RT showcases are old/lo-fi games. None of the AAA that implemented it so far convinced me otherwise, but yeah here it's a real game changer.

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I think that is because newer games have to focus on one or two RT effects due to the the rest of the rendering still taking up a decent amount of time in the rendering pipeline. Older games have a much lighter rendering load in terms of polygons, textures, cpu stuff, etc. so they can pack more advanced/holistic RT implentations, resulting in a more impressive showing when comparing RT on to RT off.

 

[spam musubi]

You know this will be on the next Xbox minecraft edition :)

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I'm not sure if a console launching next year will have a GPU that's top of the line by today's standards. Current gen console GPUs were several years outdated when they launched. Also the console makers work with AMD, and RTX is Nvidia technology.

 

[ILikeFeet]

What is the recommended GPU with raytracing to play Minecraft with RTX on at 1080p 60fps? Including in splitscreens, RTX 2060 enough?

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we don't know yet

 

[riotous]

I don't know why but my brain doesn't like these blocky games w/ ray tracing added. Quake RTX gave me the same reaction; like I understand the tech and all that but aesthetically these do not please me lol

 

[BeI]

Holy shit, it's legit amazing how much lighting can do for a game. I can't wait for ray-tracing to become more commonplace.

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Fingers crossed for raytracing in World of Warcraft in the future. Would go amazingly with the artstyle.

 

[GameAddict411]

I get the feeling that delayed super duper graphics update is getting some ray-tracing love and more for next gen.

A lot of it looks lovely but Inwonder how far they would go because materials look way different even if it's more realistic perhaps, would that clash with what people know.

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I am still skeptical we will see real hardware implementation of ray tracing on next gen consoles. If it they just feature Navi 10 gpus, then this demo will be impossible to run on next gen consoles.

 

[Perfect Chaos]

It's neat but I can't help but feel like it really ruins the bright, vibrant colors of Minecraft's aesthetic.

It's like those hideous "Unreal Fan Remakes" of classic videogames.

But I'll likely be in the minority with such an opinion.

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I would think that color and vibrancy are relatively easily tweaked. I would be surprised if ray tracing was directly tied to a specific resource pack, too. You wouldn't get the neat material effects and 3D effects on the blocks if the texture pack wasn't made with them in mind, but it'd probably be a very easy way to inject some color back in if this implementation launched as-is with no user configuration.

 

[GameAddict411]

we don't know yet

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This demo was probably running on rtx 2080 ti

 

[eso76]

I think I still prefer the way ptgi looks and I believe it's also significantly less impactful to performance than the official RTX implementation. Heck I've seen it running semi decently on a 980 iirc

 

[Eggiem]

I think the SEUS PTGI shader looks more realistic. The overshine effect (see fire at 11:12) looks fake as hell.

 

[Deleted member 19070]

Do these existing shader packs stress the GPU or cpu more? Got a 1080gtx and not sure how good I can currently make Minecraft look

 

[Dictator]

I think the SEUS PTGI shader looks more realistic. The overshine effect (see fire at 11:12) looks fake as hell.

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That is post processing, this implementation is *more realistic and true to the real physics* of light and faster. It has to be of course as it is a native Implementation, they have the true source access and hw API Support that the Java version does not have.

 

[Jessie]

I want to see this with a good texture pack. The Mojang packs ain't doing it for me.

 

[Eggiem]

Do these existing shader packs stress the GPU or cpu more? Got a 1080gtx and not sure how good I can currently make Minecraft look

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GPU. I run it on a ASUS GTX1080 and AMD 2700x and get 35-60 fps (everything on highest settings, 1080p, render distance 16 far). Give it a try!

That is post processing, this implementation is *more realistic and true to the real physics* of light and faster. It has to be of course as it is a native Implementation, they have the true source access and hw API Support that the Java version does not have.

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So you can turn it off separately?

 

[Monster Zero]

Imagine a time where all of our games will have raytraced lighting.

 

[bsigg]

Everything about this is incredible. I cannot wait to see people's creations upgraded with RT

 

[Garrett 2U]

Raytracing is a game changer

 

[InaudibleWhisper]

So you can turn it off separately?

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You can turn bloom and other post-processing effects off and on in SEUS. Whether you can when this releases who knows, but I'd be very surprised if you couldn't as Minecraft's default settings are pretty flexible given the variety of systems it has to run on. They're still tweaking it themselves, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's dialed back by default too and is just high to make it look impressively bright in demos.

 

[bsigg]

I'm not sure if a console launching next year will have a GPU that's top of the line by today's standards. Current gen console GPUs were several years outdated when they launched. Also the console makers work with AMD, and RTX is Nvidia technology.

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RTX is just Nvidia's layer to communicate between DXR and their hardware. Both consoles are set to have hardware accelerated ray tracing so I would expect Minecraft on the Scarlett to have this updated render engine along with RT support either at launch or somewhere near it.

 

[gabdeg]

This is not out until next year right? I need it now.

 

[Rpgmonkey]

Cyberpunk is still the main one I want to see but I'm kinda liking how this current crop of ray traced games are turning out more than the first run.

I am still skeptical we will see real hardware implementation of ray tracing on next gen consoles. If it they just feature Navi 10 gpus, then this demo will be impossible to run on next gen consoles.

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IIRC it's confirmed or heavily rumored that they're using hardware so they should run it. But given they're not going to use Nvidia's technology (and I don't think we have any idea at the moment how close the competition is to Nvidia) and the tendency of these demos to be using the 2080 and 2080 Ti - the current #2 and #1 consumer ray tracing GPUs available - it's hard to predict what these will look like if/when they get console versions.

Probably best to keep expectations low and be pleasantly surprised.

 

[eathdemon]

if roumers are true about nextgen consoles having rt hardware, hope a indie dev makes a fully path traced game becouse of how good path traced minecraft/quake 2.

 

[ILikeFeet]

if roumers are true about nextgen consoles having rt hardware, hope a indie dev makes a fully path traced game becouse of how good path traced minecraft/quake 2.

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Scarlett is already confirmed to have RT support

 

[rashbeep]

The effect works just as well as SEUS with interiors, but those volumetric rays look incredibly unnatural.

 

[ILikeFeet]

The effect works just as well as SEUS with interiors, but those volumetric rays look incredibly unnatural.

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is it actually unnatural or are we so used to faked effects that we can't discern ones that are actually realistic

 

[capitalCORN]

is it actually unnatural or are we so used to faked effects that we can't discern ones that are actually realistic

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Okay, that's not it. Shit is already configurable in the video people. It's going be a PC only thing for a bit probably.

 

[SapientWolf]

I think that is because newer games have to focus on one or two RT effects due to the the rest of the rendering still taking up a decent amount of time in the rendering pipeline. Older games have a much lighter rendering load in terms of polygons, textures, cpu stuff, etc. so they can pack more advanced/holistic RT implentations, resulting in a more impressive showing when comparing RT on to RT off.

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That is definitely a factor. Older games with simpler art styles also have less going visually on to distract from the lighting. Makes me wonder how something like Mario 64 would look with raytracing.