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As we’ve said, Minecraft with RTX’s worlds are almost entirely path-traced, with lighting and effects featuring unprecedented levels of detail, to give the best image quality possible. Here’s a complete list of the main effects for those who are interested or simply would like to know more about the technology behind Minecraft with RTX.

Global Illumination

Precomputed lightmaps, Image-Based Light Probes, Spherical Harmonics and Reflective Shadow Maps are used to illuminate games. Lights that are placed by artists can be used to provide light in areas where these techniques fail. While the results look amazing, the techniques used are not without flaws, with one of the biggest being that dynamic lighting fails to bounce or illuminate beyond the area where the light hit. Server lists

For example, imagine a dark room that has bright light shining through windows. Traditional methods illuminate anything that is directly illuminated by light. However the areas that are illuminated do not reflect light and therefore do not illuminate the surrounding game elements.

Path tracing allows us to accurately model the dynamic indirect light that is reflected off surfaces in the scene. It is also possible to have it interact with other effects that use ray-traced. Imagine for instance, sunlight shining into a castle through multicolored stained-glass windows reflecting off, lighting every corner of the room, reflecting off the shiny marble floor, and brightening surrounding detail, creating new contact hardening shadows to be cast by objects.