Minecraft:Ray Tracing

Template:Exclusive Template:Wip Template:Q Ray Traced<ref group="fn">Refers to the graphics mode in the game.</ref> or RTX<ref group="fn">Primarily used by Template:W in their promotion and marketing for the RTX graphic card.</ref> is a Minecraft:graphics mode that improves the visual fidelity in Minecraft:Minecraft with Template:W and real-time lighting simulation using ray tracing. It enhances graphics of sunlight and moonlight with light rays, adds Minecraft:water effects, reflections on all blocks, and light-emissive textures. It can be enabled using client-side Minecraft:resource packs that define PBR texture sets. Minecraft has published several RTX-compatible worlds for free in the Minecraft:Marketplace, in collaboration with Nvidia.

Ray tracing only affects the graphical appearance of Minecraft and has no effect on gameplay. However, many emissive light sources and reflections together can decrease game performance, especially on lower-end devices.

Features

File:RTX default light sources.png

The default light sources and their colors. Notice the diagonal shadows caused by ambient occlusion.

By default, Minecraft:torches, Minecraft:redstone torches, Minecraft:lanterns, Minecraft:soul lanterns, and Minecraft:end rods are strong emissive light sources, which create dynamic shadows using ambient occlusion and illuminate surrounding surfaces with their light color.

File:RTX VV emissive textures.png

All blocks that have emissive textures from Vibrant Visuals, as seen with ray tracing.

When a ray traced resource pack without PBR textures is applied to a world, not as a global resource, it applies all MERS block textures for Minecraft:Vibrant Visuals and ignores subsurface scattering. Metallic, rough, or emissive pixels are generally less intense than in designed ray tracing resource packs, but still noticable with the effects from ray tracing.

Physically based rendering

Directional lighting and shadows

Volumetric fog

Template:For

File:RTX pale garden fog.png

The strong fog and light scattering in pale gardens

Ray tracing supports Minecraft:volumetric fog, an additional fog layer which is affected by directional lighting, and can be customized per Minecraft:biome. Depending on the density, volumetric fog appears around directional lighting; the stronger the light the stronger the fog. The density can change with the Minecraft:altitude and fog is not applied above the build height limit. Media coefficients change the scattering and absorption of RGB light when it passes through air, Minecraft:clouds, or Minecraft:water, to tint the fog and directional lighting.

Fog can be applied to the sky, the sky during Minecraft:precipitation, Minecraft:water, Minecraft:lava, and lava with Minecraft:Fire Resistance. It is only visible with directional lighting, both sunlight and emissive textures. As light shines between objects, the shaded air does not have fog and the illuminated air does have fog, resulting in light rays. Light rays are also created by scattering from the sun, which has different colors and strengths depending on the Minecraft:time of day.

When enabling ray tracing without custom fog settings, it defaults to the biome settings defined for Minecraft:Vibrant Visuals.

Water effects

Ray tracing

Water in Minecraft with ray tracing

The Minecraft:water surface is completely transparent with Minecraft:RTX, but larger bodies of water accumulate more Minecraft:biome-colored fog. Although it is transparent, water can still have PBR textures allowing for reflections, but this is disabled by default. Light sources can illuminate the surface and the fog below the water with their color, and once sunlight hits an underwater surface, animated caustics appear.

Water surfaces also refract light from objects on the other side, but unlike refractions from transparent blocks, this is a slight distortion effect that bends objects behind it around the point of view. The top surface as seen from underwater projects Snell's window, a bright lens around which objects on the other side are distorted. The underwater surface always acts like a perfect mirror for close underwater objects, as such the environment above water is not visible inside shallow bodies.

Without directional lighting, underwater fog creates a dark green/blue atmosphere with all objects colored gray.

An Minecraft:aquifer without any light sources.

An Minecraft:aquifer without any light sources.
Snell's window and the spherical distortion.

Snell's window and the spherical distortion.
Light rays as seen underwater.

Light rays as seen underwater.
The refraction of underwater objects when floating just above the surface.

The refraction of underwater objects when floating just above the surface.
Perfect water reflections in the Hilltop Lifestyle map.

Perfect water reflections in the Hilltop Lifestyle map.
The mirror as seen from underwater

The mirror as seen from underwater

Applying

Ray tracing requires a Minecraft:resource pack with raytraced capability in its Minecraft:manifest.json file. When applied on a compatible device, this unlocks the "Ray Traced" option in the graphics mode dropdown in the video settings. It runs locally on the player's device, meaning that it can be enabled on any Minecraft:multiplayer world or Minecraft:server while other players could have it disabled. The resource pack may be enabled locally as a global resource pack, or for the entire world or server.

Ray tracing cannot be enabled in the regular settings but requires the "Allow In-Game Graphics Mode Switching" option to be enabled, to enable ray tracing in-game. It can also be enabled by setting graphics_mode to 3 in Minecraft:options.txt.

Some options related to ray tracing can be adjusted in the "Ray Traced Graphics Options" section below the graphics mode, which includes upscaling for GeForce RTX graphics cards with NVIDIA DLSS 2.0. Upscaling makes the game render the scene at lower resolution and upscaled to the native resolution to improve significantly on video performance.

The render distance for ray tracing is controlled by the "Ray Tracing Render Distance" slider instead of the regular render distance slider. This slider can be set between 8-24 chunks, but can be changed to any value chunks in options.txt.

System requirements

The ray tracing graphics mode is only available on the Windows version of Template:BE, with additional minimum requirements:<ref>Template:Cite</ref>

OS: 64-bit Windows 10 or Windows 11
GPU: DirectX hardware ray tracing capable GPU like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series, and AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series
CPU: Intel Core i5Template:More information needed or equivalent
RAM: 8GB

Official maps

The following maps are made officially in collaboration with Nvidia to promote ray tracing. They are available in the Marketplace for free, even on devices without support for ray tracing.