These Christmas-Themed Minecraft Maps Were Made For Charity

Nvidia has released a special Christmas-themed Minecraft map pack in an effort to raise money for the Great Ormond Street Hospital. The special map features three large snow globes, all of which have their own themes. Better yet, each area features ray-traced lighting and reflections, showing off the power of the technology, all for a good cause.

The maps are available for free, and can be played by anyone who has an RTX card and the latest version of Minecraft for Windows. You can find the map here, and learn more about Great Ormond Street Hospital here.

Minecraft Christmas-themed RTX Map
Credit: Mojang/Nvidia

The map’s creator, Ushio Tokura, spent over three hours building the three maps, all of which have their own themes. One features a winter wonderland, there’s Santa’s village and amore general winter setting. Together the three maps make up 38 acres of land, which roughly equates to almost 29 football fields. 

Ray Tracing is a new way of rendering light within games. Developers will typically use global illumination, which allows them to bake in lighting based on set modifiers within a scene. Ray-Tracing works differently, relying on set world lights – such as a sun or street lamp – bouncing off surfaces. This creates a much more realistic depiction of lighting, although it is incredibly taxing. 

Realistic lighting aside, are you wondering where you can play Minecraft in 2021? With so many different platforms, and versions, we’ve got an easy to digest breakdown that has everything you need to know.

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[Featured Image Credit: Mojang]