NVIDIA has released an update for Minecraft with RT support. We tell you how to put it, what it gives and how it works on the RTX 2060, 2080 and 2080 Super.
Survived. Joke “And on it Minecraft will it? ” is no longer a joke: an update with technology has been released for Minecraft ray tracing, and it literally melts video cards Nvidia. Naturally, we decided to test this matter. In a good way, the update should have been run on all available RTXs, but in quarantine only three pieces were obtained. We tell you how to start the game with retracement, how to create your own textures for it, and how now they deal with Minecraft RTX 2060, 2080 and 2080 Super.
Minecraft was first talked about RT eight months ago – and by a strange coincidence, the add-on was announced exactly one week after the closure of the cosmetic mod Super Duper. We don’t know if they coincide or not, but the fact is clear: Super Duper is no more, but RT can be installed right now.
To do this, you must register in the program Xbox Insider Hub, accept a bunch of user agreements, and then download the beta version of the game. Note that the add-in itself is free, but Minecraft will still have to be purchased. There are three ways further.
The first is the easiest: download and run ready-made worlds with Ray Tracing support. Officially, they go under the brand name NVIDIA, but the well-known modders like Razzleberries, Dr_Bond, GerminiTay and BlokWorks are responsible for them.
The second is to create your own world. There is already a little trickier. The fact is that all RTX effects are based on new textures, and by default they are not added to the game or to the local store – you need to screw the “beams” on your own. To do this, from the NVIDIA website you need download four packs with resources and copy them to the game folder (for example, I have this C: Users kolgd AppData Local Packages Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe LocalState games com.mojang resource_packs). Next, we activate the packs when creating a new world, and RTX works.
And the last, third way is to create your own textures. And here we come to how NVIDIA generally added raytracing to Minecraft. The answer is simple: she redrawn all the textures and added additional layers of “materials” to them. The bottom line is that the usual Minecraft textures are collected in two layers – the image itself and the alpha channel, which indicates which parts are considered transparent. NVIDIA added four more to them: metal, radiation, roughness and normals, which add volume to the textures. With their help, each cube receives a physical description, on the basis of which Ray Tracing works with all its refractions and reflections of rays.
Given that Minecraft is extremely popular among modders, and many even make money selling their own texture packs, NVIDIA rolled out guide on how to do them yourself. To do this, you need any graphic editor – for example, Photoshop or its equivalent – and a little perseverance.
The process itself looks simple. Open any standard Minecraft texture, add layers to it, mark which pixels will be mirrored, glowing or transparent, and save it all in a new file. Normal maps that add volume textures are also made either in Photoshop or in programs like xNormal, Substance Painter, and Quixel Mixer. As a result, you get two additional files that are thrown into the game. You can also work not directly with three different images, but immediately with 3D cubes – for this option, NVIDIA recommends the Substance program.
But what does Minecraft look like with ray tracing? On the one hand, this is a triumph of technology: due to the fact that Minecraft is very simple in terms of graphics, Ray Tracing here works to its fullest. Water correctly refracts the picture and honestly reflects all the objects around. On mirror surfaces, each level element is visible. Shadows correctly respond to light sources and overlap each other. Light passes through all the laws of physics and creates a lot of incredible effects, starting with volumetric fog and ending with “Twilight rays”. Another thing is that in Minecraft it all looks very strange. Despite the fact that objects and buildings have added to naturalism, in the game all these bells and whistles look as if out of place. Cinematic light in the world of cubes? Cool, do not argue. But not everyone will see it.
Firstly, the most obvious problem: for “rays” you need a video card from the RTX series. Secondly, it should be not just any, but very powerful card from the RTX series. See for yourself. The simplest of them, 2060, is barely pulling the new Minecraft at a basic level of playability. That is, in Full HD with maximum settings, exactly 30 fps and 22 frames of 0.1% are obtained. In other words, it does not slow down, but for Minecraft it’s somehow not enough. In QHD 2060 does not export at all – there it turns out even less than 20 fps.
However, senior cards in the new mode do not feel much better. RTX 2080 and 2080 Super in Full HD produce 45 and 47 frames at 36 at 0.1%. In QHD, they are in the region of 27-29. That is, also still playable, but with friezes. But in 4K Minecraft does not draw out any of the cards that we had on hand – there is a maximum of 13 fps with frequent failures of up to 11 frames.
However, getting a normal frame rate is still possible, and even by 2060. Apparently, realizing how complicated the algorithm was put into the game, NVIDIA added the DLSS option. In fact, this is a cunning upscale, when the game is rendered not in Full HD, but in 720p, and then due to the tensor cores it rises to the desired resolution. Usually the quality of the picture deteriorates, but in the case of Minecraft cubes, the changes are almost imperceptible. But fps grows be healthy: the result of 2060 rises from 29 to 50 fps in Full HD and to 39 in QHD. Senior cards are pulled up to 60 frames, and in 4K they give out 38-40 fps.
Was there any point in adding raytracing to Minecraft, time will tell. It seems to us that this is just technology for the sake of technology. Although I must admit that after playing a couple of hours with RT turned on, I don’t feel like going back to the classic schedule.
| Game tests (frames per second) |
| Minecraft rtx |
| GPU |
RTX 2080 Super |
RTX 2080 |
RTX 2060 |
| Full hd |
| All max |
68/38/23 |
79/77/53 |
71/40/22 |
| RTX, DLSS |
71/60/59 |
70/60/59 |
50/40/39 |
| RTX |
47/38/37 |
45/37/36 |
29/23/23 |
| QHD |
| All max |
72/40/24 |
77/53/46 |
71/39/22 |
| RTX, DLSS |
61/51/50 |
58/48/47 |
39/32/32 |
| RTX |
29/23/23 |
27/22/22 |
17/14/14 |
| 4K |
| All max |
70/40/26 |
76/52/44 |
69/36/23 |
| RTX, DLSS |
40/33/33 |
38/32/31 |
25/21/20 |
| RTX |
11/13/10 |
10/10/10 |
8/7/7 |
