Minecraft’s SEUS Path Traced Global Illumination Mod Looks Amazing – Doesn’t use RTX

Ray Tracing is undoubtedly the future of computer graphics; it’s hard to deny that. We want photorealistic visuals, and the best way of doing that is to accurately simulate light. As humans, our eyes are designed to perceive light, making fast/accurate light simulation a clear target for hardware manufacturers. 

We have spoken about Minecraft’s SEUS PTGI (Path Traced Global Illumination) mod before, but now a YouTuber called hodilton has created a lengthy comparison video which showcases the graphical impact of path tracing within Minecraft. The video below showcases path traced reflections, light refraction through glass and other graphical enhancements that are provided by the mod. 

Sonic Ether, the creator if “Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders” (SEUS) mod, has stated that the implementation of path tracing in this mod is done using OptiFine using a software accelerated model. This means that the path tracing used in the video below does not use, or need, Nvidia’s RTX hardware, as OptiFine cannot utilise Nvidia’s RT cores for hardware acceleration. In short, Sonic Ether’s path traced Minecraft can run on standard PC hardware, with more recent versions of the mod reportedly running faster thanks to some software shortcuts and other optimisations. 

Right now Sonic Ether’s path tracing mod is only available to his Patreon backers through early access, but there are plans to release the mod publically once it is stable. The aim is to allow the mod to run on any “modern GPU with decent horsepower”.