As we’ve said, Minecraft with RTX’s worlds are almost entirely path-traced with lighting and effects with extraordinary levels of detail for the very best image quality that is possible. Here’s a list of the major effects in case you’re interested or simply need to learn more about the technology behind Minecraft and RTX.
Global Illumination
Precomputed lightmaps and image-based light Probes, Spherical Harmonics and Reflective Shadow Maps are used to illuminate games. Lights placed by artists can be used to create illumination in areas where the previous techniques do not work. While the results are impressive, there are several flaws to the techniques used. The most important is that dynamic lighting does not bounce or illuminate beyond the area where it was aimed.
For instance, imagine an unlit room with bright light shining through a window. In traditional methods, everything directly struck by the light is lit however the areas that are illuminated themselves don’t bounce light, and they do not reflect light on the surrounding game elements which, in reality, they should.
Plugins
Path tracing allows us to accurately model the dynamic indirect lighting that is reflected off surfaces in the scene. It also lets it work with other ray-traced effects. Imagine sunlight shining in a castle through stained glass windows with multiple colors blocks. It will reflect off the marble floor and illuminate the surroundings. This can cause new contact hardening shadows from objects.