Minecraft with RTX Beta for Windows 10 goes live

Today is a big day for Minecraft fans, who finally get to enjoy the visual delights delivered by NVIDIA RTX. The Beta release of Minecraft with RTX for Windows 10 comes with fully path-traced rendering, NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 support, physically-based materials, as well as no less than six RTX Creator Worlds (freely downloadable from the Minecraft Marketplace, of course).

Compared to the standard Minecraft for Windows, the new Beta release — that only targets NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards, for those who had any hopes to run it on non-NVIDIA hardware — features realistic global illumination, pixel-perfect lighting delivered by illuminated blocks and various other light sources, reflections on all reflective surfaces and blocks, high-quality volumetric fog, and more. 

The aforementioned six worlds that have been added to this Beta release cover a wide range of scenarios, taking full advantage of the visual arsenal now available to Minecraft creators. Their names should say it all: Aquatic Adventure, Of Temples and Totems, Crystal Palace, Imagination Island, Color, Light and Shadow, Neon District, as well as the Razzleberries RTX Texture Showcase world that can be used only to test user-created texture packs.

Thanks to DLSS 2.0, Minecraft with RTX Beta can obtain performance bumps of up to 300 percent, depending on the resolution, world, and the hardware used, not to mention the fact that it can also improve image quality in almost every possible scenario.

Although Realms are not available in this release, taking Minecraft with RTX Beta for Windows 10 for a spin is definitely worth it, since NVIDIA is giving away some tempting items to those lucky enough (for more details about the Minecraft With RTX World Sweepstakes, take a look at this page). 

If you are planning to try the new Minecraft with RTX Beta, just be sure to get the latest driver package — labeled 445.87 — that NVIDIA unleashed yesterday morning. Just be sure to let us know what you think about the whole deal in the comments section — if you can spare a few minutes to share your thoughts, obviously.