The biggest ray-traced game yet: Minecraft RTX Beta debuts April 16 on PC ~ USA Latest Games

This gallery includes Nvidia's provided "after-and-before" images of the impact you can expect from a path-traced lighting system and material-based shaders. Here's the "after," with Minecraft RTX Beta effects enabled. [credit: Nvidia / Mojang ]

Minecraft fans have waited years for an official visual overhaul—something that retains the Mojang game's iconic, blocky aesthetic yet embraces next-gen visual flair. This wait has included both teases and failures to launch from the series' developers. This week, finally, the teases become a very, very pretty reality—at least, for those who can access it.

On Thursday, April 16, Mojang will release the Minecraft RTX Beta as a free update exclusively on Windows 10. As its name implies, this beta version of the game was co-developed with Nvidia, the makers of the RTX line of GeForce graphics cards, and as of press time, these cards are the only ones compatible with its hook into the current DirectX ray-tracing API, along with Nvidia's proprietary DLSS pipeline.

Every image and video in this article was provided by Nvidia and Microsoft, and members of the press were invited to test the Minecraft RTX Beta ahead of today's announcement. However, for now, we're forbidden from commenting any further on what we've played. Does the Minecraft RTX Beta look as good in action as it does in the above gallery? I'm not allowed to say until Thursday.

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