Microsoft Corp said on Monday it will use chipmaker Nvidia Corp’s real-time ray tracing technology to provide the software company’s Minecraft video game players more realistic graphics on personal computers.
Real-time ray tracing, or the ability for the chip to simulate how light rays will bounce around in a visual scene, helps video games and other computer graphics more closely resemble shadows and reflections in the real world.
“I think we’ve put all of the pieces in place to bring ray tracing into the future of games. The number of blockbuster games that have adopted RTX is really snowballing,” Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jen-Hsun Huang said on a post-earnings call.
Minecraft, a construction game in which players can build nearly anything imaginable, block by block, in a digital, Lego-like world, spread like wildfire since its full release in 2011 by developer Mojang, which was bought by Microsoft in 2014.
In May this year, Microsoft said 176 million versions of the game have been sold since its launch.