Thread: So, uh, whatever happened to Ray-Traced Minecraft on consoles?

Arc

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It's been just around one year since this fun demo outing was shown at one of the Series X's first showings.




Pretty much universally praised and hyped, with people expecting to see it in time for launch for the Series X, and probably the PS5. I mean, surely, one of the biggest companies in the world, wants one of the biggest games in the world, that they have exclusive rights to, to at least promote their brand new console, and have the resources to do it?

(Crickets)

And disappointment.

It wouldn't be so bad if this exact story hadn't played out a couple of years ago with the Super Duper Graphics Pack for console, again used to promote the brand new Xbox One X. (Starts about halfway through)




I'm genuinely curious about how, for the last four years, there's been two separate initiatives to overhaul the visuals of console Minecraft, and neither has come to fruition. Even on PC, the ray-tracing stuff was down to Nvidia's team. Not to be rude, but... what exactly is Mojang/Microsoft doing, other than putting the tiniest of updates out every half year, and snapping at fans when they ask what's up (this happened during a livestream)?

Ray-tracing, or any visual update, would be such a fun way for console gamers to get back into Minecraft. The game's simplicity is part of its charm, sure, but that doesn't mean one of the most popular, iconic games in the world, to this day, needs to be frozen in time circa it's early 2010s release?

I really hope we haven't seen the last of this version of the game, until it's quietly canceled some years later, but much like another Microsoft first party, 343, I really don't have any positive expectations anymore. I would love to play it, but is it going to happen at this point, with no release, and not even a peep, one year later?
 
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What happened to Ray Tracing on nextgen consoles in general? It was hyped up as THE nextgen feature and now it barely can be seen anywhere. I believe Demon's Soul has some? But very sparesly. Biggest hot air ballon feature ever, lol.
 
What happened to Ray Tracing on nextgen consoles in general? It was hyped up as THE nextgen feature and now it barely can be seen anywhere. I believe Demon's Soul has some? But very sparesly. Biggest hot air ballon feature ever, lol.
It's everywhere in Spider-Man PS5. Watch Dogs and Control also use it heavily.
 
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It's a gimmick. Very good for tanking your framerate.
Check the first video, for how it completely changes Minecraft.

While I relate somewhat, when some Digital Foundry guy is going on and on about how amazing Ray-Tracing is, and I can't see a difference, it can produce some wonderful results.

I think it has a lot to do with that overhead at the moment. Truly transformational ray tracing isn't really possible outside of older, or simpler games. So you get a bunch of little things, especially on console. Accurate reflections on all the skyscrapers and cars of Spider-Man. Shadows with CoD. A bit of lighting done with Gears.

I think those little things are nice, and add a lot in their own way. In time, the cost will become more reasonable, and we'll see some really awesome stuff.
 
We'll probably see it sometime this year I hope, that fully path-traced demo on Series X was made by one person I think in a matter of weeks. But I think with developers having low-level access to the RT hardware unlike on PC and Sony and MS constantly improving their SDKs and APIs, ray-tracing on the consoles will mature and get better over the course of this generation.
 
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