How to download and play Minecraft with Ray Tracing

Minecraft is already a fairly impressive and enjoyable game, but Ray Tracing can make the visuals and graphics of the game completely incredible.

Minecraft is undeniably an exceptional and popular game, and has the awards and data to prove it. The game earned it's place in the video game hall of fame earlier this year and surpassed the milestone of selling over 200 million copies worldwide. Not to mention, Minecraft was the most watched video game on YouTube this year, and it wasn't even close.

However, one of the major drawbacks of Minecraft is the limited, blocky, and underwhelming graphics of the game. Ray Tracing can be used to transform the visuals of the game into ones that are beautiful and truly remarkable. All it takes to do so is quick download and a powerful enough PC.

This article will serve as a guide on how to download and play Minecraft with Ray Tracing.

How to download and play Minecraft with Ray Tracing

Why use Ray Tracing?

Before getting into how to download Ray Tracing for Minecraft, why to even do it should be immediately addressed. To answer the question of why players would be interested in playing Minecraft with Ray Tracing, just take a quick peek at the video above.

Ray Tracing completely transforms the graphics of the game into high definition and realistic visuals. The difference in graphics between the older base version of the game and a modern take with Ray Tracing is stark.

Minecraft players who have a powerful enough PC to handle the requirements of Ray Tracing, would be doing themselves a disservice by not at least trying it out.

Minimum Requirements

Minecraft with Ray Tracing is very graphically pleasing, but does have some hardware requirements needed in order to enjoy (Image via techspot.com)

Players must have an official copy of a Windows 10 release version of Minecraft that is updated to at least version 1.16.200 or higher.

Furthermore, there are some PC hardware requirements that must be met in order to run Minecraft with Ray Tracing.

OS (Operation Systems): Windows 10 64-bit
GPU: DirectX hardware ray tracing capable GPU like VIDIA GeForce® RTX 20 Series and higher, and AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series and higher
Hardware: PC; Virtual reality headsets and Mixed Reality (MR) headsets are not supported
CPU: Intel Core i5 or equivalent
RAM: >8 GB of RAM

There is no current plan to support the NVIDIA GeForce GTX series cards for Minecraft with Ray Tracing.

If your PC does not meet these minimum requirements, then unfortunately Ray Tracing is out of reach for the time being. However, there are still plenty of shaders that you can use with a low-end PCs to help improve the graphics. Check those out here.

How to download Ray Tracing

There are two separate ways to experience Minecraft with Ray Tracing. Enthusiasts can either download already created Ray Tracing Enabled packs from the Minecraft Marketplace or design their very own PBR textures to use in-game.

#1 Downloading from the Minecraft Marketplace

There is a great deal of PBR and Ray Tracing content that is available for completely free on the Minecraft Marketplace, with constant additions and updates on the horizon

The Minecraft Market place has a ton of free Ray Tracing content available for players to download and enjoy (Image via help.minecraft.net)

Ray Tracing content on the Minecraft Marketplace can be identified by the blue icon. (Image via help.minecraft.net)

All ray tracing supported content can be identified on the Minecraft Marketplace by the blue icon featured above. Players who have the hardware capabilities to handle the requirements of Ray Tracing can download the available content and hop right into a Ray Tracing enabled world.

#2 Creating new PBR textures

For anyone who is not very tech savy, this is not a recommended method. However, for anyone who feels confident enough to take this on can find a full official guide by Nvidia here. Best of luck in creating something extraordinary!

Switching over from the Ray Tracing beta

Minecraft players who previously playtested the beta for Minecraft with ray tracing on Windows 10 will need to take some extra steps in order to rejoin the main version of Minecraft. If players did not participate in the beta, this section does not apply and can be skipped over.

All existing worlds, saves, and profiles should be backed up
Open the Xbox Insider Hub application
Navigate to Insider Content and click on Minecraft
Click Manage, select “Unenroll”, and then Done
Wait a few moments, then check for Minecraft updates in the Windows Store app
If the update has not been reflected, uninstall Minecraft completely, and install a fresh copy from the Windows Store

Toggling Ray Tracing On/Off

Once players are online in a Ray Tracing enabled world, Ray Tracing will be enabled by default. However, players can quickly toggle Ray Tracing on or off by pressing the ";" key or by going to Settings > Video > Ray Tracing and press the toggle.

Final Notes

There is no way to play vanilla Minecraft with ray tracing, steps have to be taken in order to experience a Ray Tracing enabled world.

Minecraft players who have not recently update their drivers, may be prompted to do so in order for Ray Tracing with Minecraft to run properly.

Players who attempt to download Ray Tracing content from the Minecraft Marketplace without having the proper PC requirements, will be denied the ability to do so.