Nvidia and Microsoft have finally announced a beta for Minecraft’s gorgeous RTX ray-tracing update. It will be available on Thursday, April 16.
I had a chance to play the beta over the weekend. Unfortunately, my thoughts on the beta are embargoed until Thursday, so I can’t go into detail on my experience with it yet.
Nvidia says the game’s RTX update will include support for DLSS 2.0. That acronym stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, a technique used by Nvidia to improve game performance. DLSS uses machine learning algorithms to upscale the render resolution of a game. For example, DLSS can be used to upscale the output of a game rendered at 1080p resolution to 4K.
This technique is important because it can boost the performance of a game significantly. Nvidia claims that the average framerate in Minecraft with RTX on, at 1080p resolution, improves from 56.8 frames per second with DLSS off to 93.6 FPS with DLSS on. At 4K, the average improves from 16.3 FPS to 49.4 frames per second. That is on a system with a Core i9-9900K, Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, and 32GB of RAM, with game detail set to maximum and draw distance set to eight “chunks.”
Minecraft’s RTX mode can improve the game’s visuals on any map, but the impact is most dramatic when colored lighting, light shafts, and reflections can come into play. To highlight this, Nvidia has partnered with select community creators, who have built custom worlds with RTX ray tracing in mind. They are:
These new worlds will be available for anyone to download for free in the Minecraft RTX beta.
The Minecraft RTX beta will be publicly available when it launches on April 16, but it won’t automatically arrive to those who have Minecraft installed.
You’ll need the Xbox Insider Hub app, which is available for free on the Microsoft Store. Once you have that, you should find the Minecraft for Windows 10 Beta listed as available content –provided you’re looking for it after it launches, of course.
Yes, you’ll need to own Minecraft for Windows 10 to access the beta. You’ll also need an Nvidia card with RTX support, an up-to-date video card driver, and the Windows 10 May 2019 update.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”