Minecraft can be made more beautiful with shaders, but it can be quite a chore to set them up and the game's default look is long in the tooth. The forthcoming "Vibrant Visuals" update promises to bring the latest graphical trickery to the blocky world without losing the franchise's locked-in aesthetics.
From the preview it looks like it's all done with light. The glow of torches, the murk of the water, cast shadows, reflections and highlights. All without smearing the generic ray-tracing look over everything and as Jens Bergeson puts it, "staying true to Vanilla."
It'll be out on Bedrock edition in the coming months, with Java to follow.
Previously:
• Raytracing with MySQL
• Will this Unreal Engine real-time ray tracing demo run on my 486DX?
• Elden Ring adds ray-tracing at long last
• Realtime raytracing on the SNES
