Earlier this year, NVIDIA, Mojang and Microsoft released the Minecraft with RTX Windows 10 beta, a special Insider standalone client that introduced stunning path-traced ray tracing to the world’s most popular game. Now, ray tracing and DLSS are available to all, having become part of the official Minecraft Windows 10 client! To celebrate, we are releasing 2 new worlds, bringing the total number of official RTX worlds for Minecraft to 15.
To experience incredible sights, accelerated by NVIDIA DLSS, simply download and install the latest version of Minecraft for Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store, head to the Minecraft Marketplace, download a free showcase world and load into it.
You can play all ray tracing worlds and maps on Realms and servers with other gamers using cross-platform Minecraft Bedrock game clients (e.g. Minecraft on Nintendo Switch), and everyone can collaborate, build and explore together. Minecraft with RTX players will by default see everything enhanced with a special Physically Based Rendering texture pack, which interplays with the ray-traced effects to further enhance your experience. Players on other platforms will see Minecraft’s standard visuals.
Using the power of ray tracing and Physically Based Rendering, you can build incredible scenes with lighting, shadows and effects running at previously-unseen levels of detail and accuracy, helping you craft wondrous worlds that'll make jaws drop.
To demonstrate the possibilities of Minecraft’s ray tracing, we’ve collaborated with creators to craft free ray-traced worlds, each with their own unique textures, designs and gameplay mechanics.
You can download these from the Minecraft Marketplace in-game. For further details check out our previous articles, here, here, and here. And we’re releasing a further two worlds, taking the total number of free, spectacular worlds to 15.
World: Colosseum RTX
Creator: BANV
Type: Creative
Download From: Minecraft Marketplace
Visit the historical Colosseum in its glory days during the Roman Empire, powered and enhanced by RTX. Explore the beautiful views and marvel at the scale and engineering genius.
Find more than 20 pieces of historical trivia, discover hidden locations, take a photo tour of the Colosseum with all its amazing ray-traced detail, and fight in the arena with up to 3 friends against waves of mobs.
Click each image to load interactive RTX ON-OFF comparisons
World: Dungeon Dash RTX (coming soon)
Creator: BlockWorks
Type: Action
Fight your way through a series of increasingly challenging dungeons nestled in a beautiful medieval countryside. Visit an Orc Fortress, a village built up in the trees, floating islands in the sky, and a mysterious mine, among many mysterious locations.
Conquer 10 unique dungeons in different biomes, earn powerful loot, and marvel at the ray-traced effects, PBR textures, and amazing sights.
Click each image to load interactive RTX ON-OFF comparisons
Accelerate Performance With NVIDIA DLSS
Path-traced ray tracing offers the very best visuals possible, ensuring each block, each scene, and each world looks incredible. This incredible level of fidelity makes greater demands on your GPU, however, so NVIDIA has worked with Microsoft and Mojang to add our critically acclaimed NVIDIA DLSS technology for GeForce RTX gamers (other gamers can use Microsoft’s upscaling technology). You can find this option in the Video settings, labeled as Upscaling.
With DLSS, we utilize deep learning, AI and the Tensor Cores found exclusively on GeForce RTX GPUs to accelerate performance in Minecraft with RTX by more than double, giving every GeForce RTX player at least 60 FPS at 1920x1080, with unprecedented image quality. And at higher detail levels, GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 players can marvel at ray-traced Minecraft at 4K at well over 60FPS.
DLSS is now available in 30 games, with many more integrations in progress for blockbusters and indie titles alike.
Already Playing The Beta? Follow These Steps
If you’ve been playing and testing the Minecraft with RTX for Windows 10 beta, thank you! Your participation has helped find bugs, optimize performance, and introduce new features that have made the experience even more enjoyable. To get back onto the mainline branch of Minecraft, you’ll need to follow a few steps:
- Back up your existing worlds, saves and profiles, just in case
- Open the Xbox Insider Hub application
- Navigate to Insider Content and click on Minecraft
- Click Manage, select “Unenroll”, and then Done
- Wait a few minutes, then check for Minecraft updates in the Windows Store app
- If you haven’t been updated, uninstall Minecraft completely, and install a fresh copy from the Windows Store
- And if you’re still having issues, uninstall Minecraft, log out from the Insider Hub, Xbox Companion App, and Windows Store. Restart your PC, then log back into the Windows Store and download Minecraft anew
Convert Java Worlds To RTX, and Make Your Own PBR Textures
Now that ray tracing’s out of beta, anyone can begin and craft a ray-traced world. But if you want to make unique PBR textures, you’ll need to learn new tools and workflows. But rather than let you stumble through the dark depths alone, we’ve written an extensive step-by-step guide, now updated for the official release of Minecraft with RTX.
Additionally, we’ve detailed how you can bring a Java world over to Minecraft with RTX, enabling it to be enhanced with ray tracing and PBR textures. Check out guide here.
Win a GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 3070!
We want to see your unique Minecraft creations with RTX ON! Create a RT-enabled PBR texture pack, build an amazing map, a work of art, or anything you can think of, and post a screenshot or video of it on social media with #Minecraft and #RTXON and you could win a GeForce RTX 3080 or RTX 3070! We’ll be showcasing the best builds on GeForce social channels and GeForce.com. See the full terms and conditions here.
Go Forth and Craft!
The official release of ray tracing and DLSS for Minecraft is the culmination of thousands of hours of work from dozens of engineers at Mojang, Microsoft and NVIDIA. We’re beyond excited to bring ray tracing in the world’s most popular game to millions of GeForce RTX gamers, and cannot wait to see players’ creations.
Be sure to share your best Minecraft moments, Realms, worlds and projects with us on social media using #Minecraft and #RTXON.
If you have any questions about the new update, head on over to the Mojang Studios FAQ.