How does Ray tracing in Minecraft work

Ray tracing has to deal with light in gaming, and this is especially true in Minecraft. Ray tracing is not a part of the vanilla version of the game, so many players might not have experienced it. It can make a huge difference in how the game looks and feels. Hence, many players play with it.

For those that aren't familiar, ray tracing may be a completely foreign topic. Most players, especially Bedrock players who don't typically use add-ons, may wonder how it works. Here's how.

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What is ray tracing, and how does it work in Minecraft

The simple answer is that ray tracing is how light appears in the game. It's intended to make the lighting look realistic.

For example, a ravine with a small hole at the top that lets in very little light would have the light fade as players continue down. Ray tracing puts that into effect.

Here's the official answer from Mojang from an FAQ about ray tracing:

"Ray tracing is a series of computer rendering techniques that bring more realistic lighting to scenes. In traditional computer rendering (or “rasterization”), lighting information is provided by objects in the scene. In contrast, ray tracing behaves more like lighting in the real world – rays of light are shone into a scene, and lighting information is collected as those rays bounce, absorb, and scatter around objects in the world."

For Minecraft, that means ray tracing affects the following things:

• Sunbeams
• Atmospherics
• Dynamic Shadows
• Ambient Occlusion
• Reflections
• Refraction

Adding ray tracing can modernize the game and make it look significantly more realistic. Many games utilize this technology, but Minecraft does it differently.

They use a technique called path tracing to render the entire scene, which means that almost everything on screen is from ray-traced lighting.

Ray tracing (Image via Mojang)

This method often leads to better results, but it is more challenging to implement. Unfortunately, that makes it unavailable to certain players and specific devices.

Per Mojang, the following are the requirements to use it:

• OS (Operation Systems): Windows 64-bit
• GPU: DirectX hardware ray tracing capable GPU like NVIDIA 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
• A version of Minecraft: 1.16.200 or higher

Mojang is reportedly working on bringing this feature to other devices, but they haven't yet.