The latest Minecraft preview build on Xbox Series X|S suggests that the game might soon be receiving a next-gen update, complete with ray tracing support.
As spotted by The Verge editor Tom Warren, the game’s latest preview version has seemingly been optimized for Xbox Series X|S, and packs early ray tracing support on Microsoft’s next-gen console.
Minecraft with raytracing on Xbox? The latest Minecraft Preview is optimized for Xbox Series S / X and has early raytracing support 👀 pic.twitter.com/cqH0cuGbtS
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) March 28, 2022
Of course, Minecraft already supports NVIDIA’s lighting rendering technique on PC, but to date, this feature hasn’t been made available on Xbox. Going by this latest preview build, however, Xbox Series players will soon be able to enjoy Mojang’s popular building title with ray tracing. On PC, Minecraft also supports NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling technique in order to enhance and upscale the game’s visuals using AI.
We’ve included some videos of Minecraft using real-time ray tracing on PC down below.
When played on a GeForce RTX GPU, you can experience worlds that are fully path-traced, enabling reflections, shadows, caustics, global illumination, and other realistic lighting effects that interact naturally with physically based textures applied to Minecraft’s blocks. These PBR textures enable per-pixel emissives, volumetric effects, and other never-before-seen sights, that together with the path-traced effects usher in the next evolution of Minecraft. Learn more in our GTC Digital talk, available to view here.
In the past few months, we have worked diligently with many talented creators from the Minecraft community to build the first custom ray-traced worlds. Below is a first look at worlds from Razzleberries, BlockWorks and GeminiTay, creators who were selected due to their active imaginations and fantastic track record of making captivating contributions in the Minecraft community.
Minecraft is available globally now for PC and consoles. As always, we will update you as soon as we learn more about this rumored Minecraft Xbox Series X|S update. For now, stay tuned.
