Tested: Minecraft showcases the beauty of ray tracing—and Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0
After an endless drip of teases, Minecraft for Windows 10 has rolled out a beta that adds support for real-time ray tracing and Nvidia’s faster, better Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 2.0 technology. Friends, the wait was worth it. Ray-traced Minecraft is glorious to behold, completely altering the look and feel of the game—though this low-fi legend can make even the most fearsome graphics cards sweat when you activate the cutting-edge lighting technology.
We’ve already discussed the technical details in our Minecraft beta announcement coverage. Hit that up to learn what you’ll need to run this new-look Minecraft. (Spoiler: A GeForce RTX 20-series GPU is mandatory at the moment, as it’s the only gaming hardware with dedicated ray-tracing hardware built-in.) This article will only tackle visual comparisons and performance concerns.
Long story short: My god, it’s gorgeous.
Most ray-traced games, such as and , embrace the technology in a hybrid manner. A couple of effects in those games use real-time rays for goes into far more detail.) But , like , opts for full-on path tracing instead. That means all lighting in the game happens with rays, delivering incredibly realistic shadows, lighting, reflections, and more.
