Mojang Announces Ray Tracing for Minecraft with NVIDIA RTX Cards

It looks like Super Duper Graphics is actually coming to Minecraft… in a way. 

Mojang announced the now-dead update’s successor today: DXR ray tracing tech is officially coming to Minecraft.

The change is made possible by Mojang’s new Render Dragon engine, of which the new ray tracing feature is just a part. Naturally, it’ll require a system that supports ray tracing technology with DirectX R and runs Windows 10.

The update will be completely moddable as well. Players will be given all the tools and materials they need to create “their own physically based materials, textures and objects, to generate endless path-traced content for themselves and others.”

While this will be the initial major graphics update released for Minecraft, Mojang is working on several enhancements for non-DirectX R devices, but the team labeled those a “long-term” goal.

Render Dragon is a brand-new engine for Minecraft, and the dev team is still getting to grips with what it’s capable of. Expect even more changes and enhancements in the future beyond ray tracing, Mojang says.

These enhancements will be for other platforms apart from PC as well, including mobile platforms, thanks to Render Dragon’s capabilities. How long-term these changes are isn’t clear, though, since the team said changes will start rolling out across platforms “in the months ahead.”

The system requirements necessary for supporting ray tracing mean that specific aspect will just be for the PC version of Minecraft, not the other platforms that support the Bedrock Edition.

Given Mojang’s recent announcement about the challenges of getting enhancements right across all platforms, that’s not too surprising.

Plus, ray-tracing technology in home consoles is still a ways off with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett.

Mojang also promised more details later in the year, along with updates for when players can expect to see Minecraft in a brand-new light on their favorite platforms.