Minecraft to get official ray tracing support on PC

Thanks to Nvidia, Minecraft will finally receive official real-time ray tracing support.

PC players with a Nvidia RTX GPU will soon be able to experience the realistic graphics without needing to download mods to do it.

"We wanted to keep the authentic look of Minecraft and still push the boundaries of ray tracing," said Michael Weilbacher, chief technology officer of Minecraft.

Saxs Persson, Minecraft's franchise creative director added: "RTX gives the Minecraft world a brand new feel to it. In normal Minecraft, a block of gold just appears yellow, but with ray tracing turned on you get to see the specular highlight, you get to see the reflection, you can even see a mob reflected in it."

This follows the news that Minecraft's Super Duper Graphics update had been scrapped, but according to Polygon, Nvidia's timing is likely coincidental, and its ray tracing support shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for the cancelled graphics update.

Polygon also notes the ray tracing update is scheduled to be released "within the next year" - though there's no exact date yet, it will be part of a free update for the Windows 10 version of the game.

Minecraft isn't the only game to benefit from Nvidia's ray tracing support however, Digital Foundry have the details on the other key PC games to look out for getting ray tracing at Gamescom 2019.