Minecraft 2? No, this is the blocky builder with ray tracing
The genre-spawning Minecraft needs no introduction. It’s known both for its block-based building but if you know the game, you’ll also know it for its blocky, functional, graphics. One modder has decided to change this, implementing path tracing lighting into the game.
Path tracing works somewhat similarly to ray tracing, in that rays bounce throughout the scene, although I’m not entirely smart enough to see the difference between the two, path tracing is graphically more demanding than ray tracing, but in theory should deliver better lighting effects than ray tracing.especially when it can transform Minecraft into something that looks this good.
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It really does look stunning. Take a look at this video from artist @NotGlacier, who captured footage that shows light softly glowing from torches, or casting shadows through glass.
they added ray tracing in the new minecraft shader dev build i am absolutely shitting myself pic.twitter.com/sEbY78Vuz5
— notglacier (@notglacier) March 30, 2019
If you’re backing Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) on Patreon, you can download the latest version right now and play Minecraft with these effects turned on. Be warned though, it needs some serious graphical grunt: NotGlacier claimed that he was getting between 25 and 40 fps from a PC running an i9-9900k CPU and a GTX 1070 Ti.
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If you’re not backing Sonic Ether on Twitter, you can grab the public releases on his site. There’s no version with path traced lighting just yet for general consumption, but it’ll probably show up soon.
What do you make of this Minecraft upgrade? Let us know on Twitter at @Trustedreview, although I’d wager it’s just shocked gifs.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.