Ten years since its release, and Minecraft continues to be one of the most popular games of our time — now, it’s getting a makeover in the form of ray tracing. This is the holy grail of gaming graphics, which simulates the physical behavior of light to bring a real-time, cinematic-quality rendering to a game.
NVIDIA first revealed it was working on these realistic visuals for Minecraft last year — now they’re set to roll out to Windows users on April 16th. Currently in beta, the release will be the familiar Minecraft single-player experience, except with ray-traced reflections, shadows, lighting and customized, realistic materials. Plus, you’ll get to explore six new RTX worlds developed by community creators. These worlds, which include Aquatic Adventure, Imagination Island and Neon District, are available for free in the Minecraft Marketplace to gamers with Minecraft Windows 10.