Gamescom 2019: NVIDIA Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing to Minecraft
RTX Support for Dying Light 2, SYNCED: Off-Planet, and Metro Exodus – The Two Colonels Also Announced
Minecraft RTX Update
NVIDIA’s Gamescom presence was all about RTX this year, as one might expect, and among the announcements just happens to be the best-selling PC game of all time. Teaming up with Microsoft NVIDIA has announced real-time ray tracing support for Minecraft today, which will be provided via a free game update.
“Together, NVIDIA and Mojang are adding a form of ray tracing known as path tracing for the Windows 10 version of the game. Path tracing simulates the way light is transported throughout a scene. It presents a unified model for lighting calculations for many different types of effects that have traditionally been implemented separately using rasterized or hybrid renderers. Among these are:
- Direct lighting from the sun, sky and various light sources, including emissive surfaces such as glowstone and lava
- Realistic hard and soft shadows depending on the size, shape and distance of the light source
- Per-pixel emissive lighting
- Indirect diffuse illumination (diffuse global illumination)
- Indirect specular illumination (reflections)
- Transparent materials with reflection, refraction and scattering (stained glass, water, ice)
- Atmospheric scattering and density (volumetric fog, light shafts, realistic sky)
More RTX Titles Announced
In addition to the RTX update to the PC version of Minecraft, NVIDIA added to the list of games offering real-time ray tracing support with some new announcements. The list from Gamescom includes:
- SYNCED: Off-Planet (ray-traced reflections and shadows)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (ray traced shadows)
- Metro Exodus – The Two Colonels DLC (ray-traced global illumination with emissive lighting)
- Watch Dogs: Legion (ray-traced reflections)
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (ray-traced reflections)
- Wolfenstein: Youngblood (ray traced reflections)
NVIDIA has also announced that they have partnered with Techland to bring real-time ray tracing to Dying Light 2.
More details can be found in the press releases for Minecraft as well the rest of NVIDIA’s Gamescom announcements.
