Play Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1 with real-time path tracing on a GeForce RTX GPU, powered by NVIDIA RTX Remix.

What To Expect

This is a beta. It was built as a technology showcase, but we love Minecraft and want it to succeed as a rendering mod. We tuned it against one showcase world, built for this project by BlockWorks (see Showcase World And Art Pack), and the places that world visits are where it looks and runs best. We have worked hard to fix as many issues as we could, but it ships with known issues, and there are certainly bugs yet to be discovered.

Three areas have had less attention than the rest:

• Other mods. It has had limited testing alongside other mods, and a renderer that takes over the scene the way this one does is likely to conflict with anything that changes rendering or the chunk pipeline.
• A full playthrough. Blocks, mobs, dimensions, and situations the showcase never reaches have had less care, and some will look wrong or run slowly.
• Other versions. It targets Minecraft 1.21.1 only, chosen because that is where the modding community is today. Ports to newer versions are something we hope the community takes on.

We hope the community helps fill it out. If something breaks, report it; if you can fix it, see Contributing.

Download

Download the release archive from the Releases page.

Install in three steps

1. Extract the release archive.
2. Double-click install.bat and follow the menu.
3. Launch the NVIDIA RTX Remix for Minecraft profile from your launcher.

The step-by-step version, with launcher advice and troubleshooting, is in Playing.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, x64 or ARM64.
• Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1, on a Microsoft account that owns the game.
• A GeForce RTX 30-series or newer GPU with NVIDIA driver 616.92 or newer.
• About 5 GB of free disk space while installing; about 3 GB stays in use.
• An internet connection while the installer runs.
• 16 GB of system memory is recommended.

Java 21, Fabric, and the RTX Remix runtime are installed for you.

Building and running from source has its own prerequisites, including Prism Launcher, signed in to a Microsoft account that owns Minecraft: Java Edition.

Crash Reports And Privacy

The mod collects no data of its own. The RTX Remix runtime it carries can send basic session information and crash reports to NVIDIA. Its First Use Guide asks about both, with both on by default, and the Permissions tab of the RTX Remix Graphics Settings menu changes them at any time. Crash Reports And Privacy lists what is sent.

What it does

Every block, mob, and item is lit by a path tracer. Light bounces off walls, through glass, and out of torches the way it does in a film renderer, so shadows, reflections, and the colour a nearby block casts on its neighbours are all computed rather than painted in.

The look follows the game. Time of day, weather, and being underwater each bring their own lighting, and a map author can attach a look to a place in the world. Nothing needs switching on.

A new block. The Copper Beacon is a directional lamp you can place or carry, and its beam is a real light that picks out walls, rain, and anything standing in it.

Camera flythroughs. Record a path by walking it, then replay it, for a video or for an exact before-and-after comparison.

A settings screen in the game. Distances, framerate, sky, lighting, exposure, and materials, all in Options, with no config files to edit, and a button into Remix's own Graphics Settings for the quality tier.

Showcase World And Art Pack

Two optional extras go with the mod. The developer launcher in tools/ downloads both the first time it runs and launches into the world with the pack on.

• The showcase world, the map the renderer was tuned against, was built for this project by BlockWorks: website, YouTube, X, and Instagram.
• The RTX art pack, a texture resource pack, was created by an art team at NVIDIA. Its normal and specular maps follow the LabPBR standard, so other renderers and shader packs that read LabPBR may be able to use it too, but it has only been tested with this mod. Its _sss subsurface maps are this mod's own addition, described in Resource Packs.

Start Here

You want to	Read
Play with path tracing	Playing
Check the known issues	Issue tracker
Play on a server	Multiplayer
Configure the renderer	Settings
Look up a command, a key, or a mod-added block	In-Game Guide
Give your own map its own lighting	Gameplay-driven profiles
Make a texture pack this renderer understands	Resource Packs
Record a camera flythrough	Camera Paths
Install, repair, or uninstall in detail	packaging/INSTALL.md
Build and run from source	Getting Started
Tune the developer knobs behind the renderer	Tuning
Diagnose a rendering or native integration problem	Rendering Diagnostics
Contribute a change	CONTRIBUTING.md
Report a bug	Reporting a Bug
Report a security vulnerability	SECURITY.md
See what changed	CHANGELOG.md

Source And Tooling Layout

Path	Purpose
src/	Mod implementation and JVM tests
rtxremix-java/	Minecraft-agnostic Java facade and JNI bridge over the RTX Remix C API
tools/	Developer launcher, benchmarks, profiling, SDK staging, and development installation
packman/	Packman bootstrap and runtime package pins
packaging/	Public installer, runtime defaults, and distribution payload
docs/	Player, authoring, and source-build guides

NVIDIA maintains some release and CI tooling outside this repository. It is not required by the public Gradle build, the developer tools, or the installed mod.

Contributing

External contributions are welcome, and the gaps above are where help matters most: compatibility with other mods, coverage of the blocks, mobs, and places a real playthrough reaches, and performance on hardware we do not have. Fork this repository, create a development branch, and submit a pull request. Sign off each commit with git commit -s to certify it under the Developer Certificate of Origin; there is no Contributor License Agreement to sign. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (Apache-2.0). See the LICENSE file. Attribution notices are in NOTICE, and third-party software distributed with this project is documented in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Release archives also carry the RTX Remix runtime, whose NVIDIA components are covered by their own license terms; THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md lists them.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT. Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Synergies AB.

NVIDIA, GeForce, and RTX are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.