can be improved Minecraft with technology like ray tracing? A few days ago, the Internet echoed that the arrival of this light ray tracing technology was imminent for the new Xbox Series X. Many fans of the block game were excited about the news. However, a couple of days later, Minecraft’s own Twitter profile has tried to calm the masses by implying that it was all a misunderstanding.
Minecraft with Ray Tracing for Xbox Series. Microsoft wants you to forget what happened
Just a couple of days the illusion has lasted. It all started with a tweet from Tom Warrensenior editor of TheVerge. Warren attached a video to his post of himself playing Minecraft. After pausing the game, he would enter the settings menu and go to the video section. Within the panel, new options appeared. Ray Tracing, configurable at a distance between 8 and 28 blocks. And while it may seem like Minecraft is too simple a game for this technology to have any impact, there is a visual difference between traditional rendering and ray tracing. Although, incidentally, in Warren’s video you can also see that the implementation of the technology is still very green, because it is difficult for it to load the elements of the map.
Minecraft with ray tracing on Xbox? The latest Minecraft Preview is optimized for Xbox Series S / X and has early raytracing support 👀 pic.twitter.com/cqH0cuGbtS
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) March 28, 2022
Tom Warren wasn’t the only one who got it. All users registered in Minecraft Preview they were able to get their hands on this beta version of the game. Other players were also able to access this feature by joining the games of users who had installed the ray-tracing packages on their consoles and started a multiplayer game. However, if you want to try it, we anticipate that you have arrived too late.
Microsoft says it was all a mistake
A couple of days later, with the entire community shaken by the news, Microsoft has come to spoil the party. According to those of Redmond, the idea was to test the ray tracing on Xbox Series S and Series X consolesBut that doesn’t mean we’re going to see this technology in the video game anytime soon.
As they said, they forgot to remove the ray tracing part of the code in the preliminary version they released for Xbox Insiders. Immediately afterwards, Microsoft eliminated said version of the video game and uploaded a new version without this implementation.
The previous Minecraft Preview build available to Xbox Insiders inadvertently included prototype code for raytracing support on Xbox consoles. This early prototype code has been removed from Preview and doesn’t signal near future plans to bring raytracing support to consoles.
— Minecraft (@Minecraft) March 31, 2022
Everything seems to indicate that Mojang Studios is investigating this technology in Minecraft. However, they did not want to make this version public due to its poor optimization. On Windows, Minecraft does support ray-tracing, but it achieves it and enhances it thanks to the DLSS scaling of Nvidia graphics cards. Now, the studio has the arduous task of incorporating AMD’s support for FSR 2.0 for Xbox and thus improving Minecraft’s ray tracing frame rates on next-gen consoles. Will they get it soon? Seeing the exaggerated response that Microsoft has made, everything seems to indicate that this will not be the case.
