While Mojang cancelled the long-delayed Super Duper Graphics Pack for Minecraft because it was “too technically demanding,” the developer is bringing visual upgrades to the game after all.
The game will get a visual upgrade with both Render Dragon, a new game engine that allows for new edge highlighting and lighting techniques, and more tools that open the door to visual upgrades later. The game is also getting Nvidia ray tracing, which you can see in the above video.
“We couldn’t be more excited to take advantage of the new ray tracing technology from Nvidia,” Mojang said in the update. “It’ll be playable on Windows 10 with devices that are capable of DirectX R, such as with an Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU (and we plan to expand it to future platforms that support DirectX R ray tracing).” If you’re down, keep an eye out: Minecraft will run an RTX beta “in the new year.”
The new Render Dragon engine will be able to roll out visual updates to older hardware running the Bedrock version, including Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and even Apple TV.
“Render Dragon supports a range of graphics features, depending on what your device is capable of. Not all devices will support ray tracing, but we will have some graphics enhancements on most devices.”
Minecraft has been available for Windows PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, 3DS, PS Vita, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, and both iOS and Android.