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Ray Tracing for non-RTX devices

We should be able to use ray tracing on Bedrock Edition even if we don't have an RTX graphics card.

I have a powerful PC, and a good graphics card, but I can't use ray tracing because my computer does not have an RTX graphics card. My PC can handle pretty hardcore ShaderPacks on Java edition, (which runs worse than Bedrock normally) but Minecraft won't allow me to use Ray Tracing.  I have a very cool survival world I would like to see with Ray-Tracing, but I can't afford a $3000 PC, just for RTX.

So my suggestion is to allow all PC's to use Ray Tracing, but if the game notices that you are not using a very powerful computer, it gives you a warning saying something like this:

"Warning: your device does not have the right capabilities to use Ray-Tracing features. Enabling Ray-Tracing on a non-capable device could ruin your worlds and/or overheat your device. Are you sure you want to continue?" and have Continue/Cancel buttons.

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  • 9
    Registered User commented
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    That. Is impossible without major damage to your game conlsole and phone causing it to over heat if it doesn’t have an rtx or good graphics

  • 6
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    Even if it did give you the option to run it anyway it wouldn't work. It's impossible for a normal graphics card to run something like that, the ones on Java you're talking about most likely aren't actual ray tracing.

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    This is impossible, believe me, I wish I had RTX, but it doesn't work. The next best alternative is shaders, which Minecraft so kindly removed to force us to pay for a $600 graphics card.

  • 6
    Registered User commented
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    i like the idea

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    but it might be hard to do it

  • 2
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    Bro that is not possible

  • 4
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    This is possible, but the performance will be much worse than you'd expect.
    The ray-/path-traced lighting you're used to is limited to screenspace—a path cannot be traced off-screen or behind objects.

    RTX is a fancy marketing term for NVIDIA's new-ish hardware made specifically for realtime *worldspace* path tracing. Worldspace path tracing traces paths to sources that aren't visible on-screen and has existed for decades, but consumer devices typically weren't powerful enough to process it in realtime at a decent frame rate.

    In other words, CPUs and pre-RTX GPUs can render worldspace path traces in realtime using either the Microsoft DirectCompute, OpenCL, or NVIDIA's CUDA APIs which allow programmers to leverage GPGPU. Tensor cores are simply general computing cores on the GPU that are faster at addition and multiplication. Tensor cores are relatively new which is why they weren't in GPUs until a few years ago.

  • 5
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    @blackholewarp69
    > That is impossible without major damage to your game console and phone by causing it to over heat if it doesn’t have an rtx or good graphics

    Damage? No, but overheating is possible in the sense that the device will shut down BEFORE any permanent damage is incurred. Consumer hardware's shutdown/critical temperature is typically 100°C. I overclock a GTX 1070 and it rarely gets close to 80°C. It has its stock three fans for cooling and I haven't re/delidded the GPU core package or changed the thermal compound.

    @NinjaMasterMace
    > Even if it did give you the option to run it anyway it wouldn't work. It's impossible for a normal graphics card to run something like that, the ones on Java you're talking about most likely aren't actual ray tracing.

    It would work, but not as efficiently because there wouldn't be any Tensor cores on the GPU onto which expensive math operations could be offloaded. It would instead be processed on the CPU or other general purpose computing cores on the GPU.

    Ray/path-traced shaders in the DirectX11- and OpenGL-based renderers use real path tracing. The difference is the spacial environment in which the paths are traced—They cannot trace paths to off-screen or obscured sources.

    @johnstonj97> This is impossible, believe me, I wish I had RTX, but it doesn't work.

    It's possible. The difference is performance due to relatively new hardware technology called Tensor cores.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    why can't we just get shaders that are like prerendered raytracing for users who don't have a rare rtx card, and perhaps make it customizable in a way that even mobile players would be able to use it, perhaps just entity shadows or sun rays, it does not need to look realistic it has to look beautiful and that is the point of shaders, not realism.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Mojang aft Mojang should let mobile players able to access Rtx on iOS/android without an rtx graphics card.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    > why can't we just get shaders that are like prerendered ray-tracing

    As soon as a block is broken or placed, the pre-rendered shader becomes outdated. If the geometry changes enough, the shader won't be apply to the geometry correctly. Even if you meant that it should be updated every time there's a change to a block, breaking or placing a block would cause a hang when the game finishes processing the change and tries to apply the new shader.

    Better question: Why can't we have screenspace raytracing like we did before the RenderDragon engine? It's still expensive performance-wise, but not nearly as much as world-space ray-tracing. The answer is: money, obviously. I'm guessing Nvidia has a contract with Microsoft for exclusivity; that would make Minecraft required to use Nvidia's RTX API, blocking capable hardware made by AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and other GPU manufacturers. That drives sales toward Nvidia, away from its competitors.

    If this weren't the case, the other manufacturers would still need to provide APIs that are as easy to use and learn as the RTX API for Mojang to even consider going through the pain of supporting other non-Nvidia hardware.

    Note: I mentioned Qualcomm earlier. Their newest chips have more and better Tensor cores which would help a lot with realtime world-space ray-tracing. However, Nvidia boasts that its GPUs have cores dedicated to ray-tracing which likely gives them the edge over those that lack them.

    -- BinToss

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    I have an equivalent Quattro Pro. Still NVidia, still powerful, it can do ray tracing in other apps, like CAD renderings, just fine. But Minecraft won't enable raytracing. That's annoying as heck, and should be my choice. I understand that they're using the RTX APIs, but the exclusivity of that is almost rude.

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    others say it is impossible for rtx shaders to be enabled with non rtx desktops like come on i can run semi heavy rtx shaders on my minecraft java with only using a gtx 1650 card, so why not mojang make it possible to use rtx with non rtx cards ? and the rtx shaders that mojang provided on the marketplace of bedrock isn't even that heavy -_- 

    PLEASE MOJANG !!! consider making it possible for non rtx devices or for gtx cards to be able to use rtx shaders. LIKE PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360076863371/comments/4414274198925
    > others say it is impossible for rtx shaders to be enabled with non rtx desktops like come on i can run semi heavy rtx shaders on my minecraft java with only using a gtx 1650 card,

    The 1600 series is labelled as GTX, but they still have the RT cores used in RTX cards. That's why they can be used for RTX-based ray tracing.

    They aren't labelled RTX because they don't have the AI cores that are present in RTX cards.

    -- BinToss

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    I have most of the minimum requirements for ray tracing. It requires Windows 64-bit, and I have Windows 10 64-bit, it requires Intel Core i5, and I have Intel Core i7, it requires 8 GB of RAM, and I have 16 GB of RAM, it requires Minecraft 1.16.200 or higher, and the version of Minecraft I'm currently running is 1.18.2, but the only minimum requirement I don't have is the graphics card. It requires NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series and higher, but I have NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. Since people nowadays are saying the world should be more inclusive, ray tracing should be expanded for users who have most of the minimum requirements, but only have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I know I got a beastly GTX Graphics Card and it dosn't work but i can use java edition shaders no problem just switch to jave

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    pre 1.17 or pre renderdragon you could use shaders without rtx. idk what people mean by 'its impossible' or 'it will destroy your graphics card' because it doesnt and they dont know what theyre talking about. if you really want shaders then you can downgrade your minecraft to a older version and any shaders will work on it.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Pre-1.17 or pre-Renderdragon, you could use shaders without RTX

    This is the most frustrating part of Renderdragon. Why have we not seen any Screen Space shader effects running on Renderdragon? It's probably because Renderdragon does not provide the traditional data (screen space geometry buffer) and functionality needed to do that. If I were a shaderpack developer, I'd know for sure. But I'm not, so I'm only guessing.

    -- BinToss

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    have more free worlds that does not require RTX video card. we have 2 gaming PCs in our household, the cheapest video card that supports the RTX required is $1900 USD. after paying for a brand new gaming PC for my child and paying for the game on the XBox and also having to pay for the PC version, plus having to pay every month for her to get new worlds, minecoins, skinpacks, and textures.  i can't afford to pay another $1900.00 for the video card that supports the RTX. all the new free worlds require the RTX and most of the sales are on worlds that require RTX. because of this, she has started playing roblox more simply because it gives her more options that are cheaper and she can get free stuff. 

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Actually this is very much possible. I was able to run it smoothly during the beta with the exploit that allowed non rtx cards to run minecraft rtx by renaming the card in the files. I will say that that was beta and that isn't necessarily the same thing as the rtx we have now, but the gtx models (the one that I have) have received updates and are capable of running rtx. The only problem is that minecraft will not allow this, which I personally think is stupid. I don't know if NVIDIA made a contract with microsoft when creating this that made Microsoft agree to forcing an rtx card, resulting in more money for NVIDIA as people would have to buy NVIDIA's newer generation as opposed to the cheaper gtx generation. This is all theoretical but I know for a fact rtx runs pretty well on a gtx.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Facts

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    @LilJamieBear
    Re: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360076863371/comments/7754187208845

    Actually this is very much possible. I was able to run it smoothly during the beta with the exploit that allowed non rtx cards to run minecraft rtx by renaming the card in the files.

    Honestly, I'd completely forgotten that GTX cards could run RTX code albeit with worse performance.
    A (⚠️) symbol with a warning tooltip or confirmation popup when using an incompatible GPU should pacify informed plaintiffs.

    —BinToss

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    its not impossible, just hard.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    That would be amazing if you have a great performance pc without RTX and you don't want to spend $600+ for a RTX card.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    i would really like to use ray tracing on an xbox series s/x but sadly i cant. no matter what i do there is litterally no way to do it and this frustrates me very much so i just want mojang to fix this

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    to run it in mobile i think iphones they have shader support

     

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I think it should be ok as long as you have a decent enough graphics card Like I can run Java Shaders so Why no Bedrock it makes no sense plus I don't even have a RTX I have a GTX

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    this would be a great idea just having it only to pc players and not phone/android/ and consoles even though most PCs will die, it will be fine (maybe). but if you can run seus ptgi on java you can definitely run minecraft RTX since java has awful proformance compared to bedrock so youll get a tad bit more fps on bedrock, so this is a great idea and sorry for being 2 years late 

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    i would love this because my computer can handle java shaders but theres no way to get rtx on bedrock

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Honestly, I agree with you although as others have mentioned, it would be nearly impossible to run ray tracing on a sub-par system. What would be good if Mojang or possibly a mod creator made a system similar to ray tracing which wouldn't create as nice graphics but could run on lesser systems.