Minecraft Ray-Tracing Public Beta Releases April 16

Microsoft / NVIDIA

For those of you out there with an NVIDIA RTX GPU, Minecraft is about to look a whole lot different.

Beginning on April 16, the Windows 10 Bedrock Edition of Minecraft will receive a massive update that will completely overhaul the graphics of the game as you currently know them.

While you will have the option of creating your own ray-tracing world, you might want to dive in and play some of the RTX maps that were created with the enhanced graphical options in mind.

With Minecraft garnering over 100 billion YouTube views in 2019 alone, it makes sense that some of the popular creators were given the option to create six different worlds. These creators include Razzleberries, Blockworks, GeminiTay, Dr_Bond, PearlscentMoon and Elysium Fire.

Each world will give players a taste of what to expect, whether it’s new lighting or shadows, and for many fans, this will almost feel like a brand-new game. Take a look at the two images below and see how different things become.

RTX off.

Microsoft / MojangRTX on.

Of course, there are some caveats to the whole situation, with the major one being you’ll need to own Minecraft on Windows 10 and you’ll need to have an RTX graphics card.

For the time being, this will not be an update on consoles, but with the next-gen being just right around the corner, it might not end up being too long of a wait if you don’t have a PC capable of running the RTX worlds.

Some good news is if you create a world filled with ray-tracing, you’ll still be able to play a cross-play version of Minecraft with your friends on that map, but anyone without the proper hardware won’t be able to see the added effects.

For playable framerates, it’s recommended players hop into RTX worlds with

While the beta does begin on April 16, it will eventually be rolled out as a free update later in the year.