Minecraft is getting a huge visual overhaul tomorrow as it’s entering a Beta version for Windows 10 and users with Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards will be able to play with more realistic ray tracing. At QuarkXR we see this as a good opportunity to talk about Nvidia’s RTX and DLSS technologies in the context of Virtual Reality and how they can apply to what we’d consider to be more suitable use cases.

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As a lot of you probably know, Nvidia RTX is a graphics rendering platform, primarily aimed at enabling real time ray tracing. This is what makes games and virtual environments look much closer to the real world.

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Needless to say, RTX has its negative features too: some games arguably look better without ray tracing and the technology is often too demanding for the hardware it’s running on.

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Okay, we’re not the biggest fans of using such innovations for realistically-looking Minecraft, but we are aware of the marketing implications and power this collaboration brings. Yet, we believe the way-better use case of ray tracing and DLSS is VR and certain directions in particular: architecture, science, education, military training, corporate training, etc.

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A segment we appreciate a lot is the aforementioned DLSS or Deep Learning Super-Sampling. It allows for games to be rendered at a lower resolution, thus offloading some work from the system. From then on, the DLSS (version 2.0 with better success) compensates for the missing pixels by displaying what its neuron network considers to be a logical fit. Тhis technology can also be applied to streaming where it can lead to an upscale in resolution from full-HD to 4K.

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Since VR is extremely demanding (everything has to be rendered twice – once for each eye), it’s a great use case for DLSS. The super-sampling can even be used without RTX for higher framerate purposes.

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What we hope the future looks like: since there are devices like Nintendo Switch and Magic Leap successfully utilizing the NVIDIA Tegra, our hope is that RTX and DLSS would be put to work on streaming for ultra-realistic and immersive experiences.

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Are you also excited about the more realistic look of games and experiences, and where do you stand on the more real-world look for Minecraft?