There are people reading this who likely grew up playingMinecraft, a game which is still going strong to this day, despite being released back in 2011, or even 2009 if you count the early alpha build. Beinga game with near-infinite replay value, it has spent the last ten-plus years providing a digital canvas for the creative fan base. Much of this success is in spite of the blocky, simplistic, almost retro-style visuals of it. And while the aesthetic is perhaps one of the reasons the game sticks out, sometimes it’s fun to imagine what it would look like if it were more realistic.
User Salamantic did just that, when they uploaded a screenshot for theMinecraftcommunity on Reddit to feast their eyes on. The image shows some unknown city, with high-rise buildings a-plenty, a strip of road that runs along, and a river that flows nearby. At a cursory glance, the photo appears to be just that, a photograph of some bustling metropolis, but on closer inspection, it is in fact an image taken from the Mojang-made title instead.
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The result has left many people in the comments at a loss for words over how real it looks. The fact that there are randomly lit windows in the building seems to “sell it,” one person comments. It should be said at this point that, although it’s a pretty stunning image, the original poster did say that it was a render done in Chunky, and not a snapshot taken in-game.Creating photorealistic assets inMinecraftusing Chunky, or Blender, is a fairly common practice, and it really shows off the idea of what a game like this could look like with a more “naturalistic” look.
It is the simple and brightly-colored graphics that probably what make the game so recognizable, but even so, it has gone through some graphical upgrades over the years. Back in 2020,Minecraftwas given RTX ray tracing, which uses Nvidia’s technology to significantly improve the light and shadow of a game. In this case, it gave the blocky world impressive water reflections and shaders that made it really pop.
It’s in part thanks to the fan base that keeps creating interesting builds, and people like Salamantic showing off amazing renders, that contribute toMinecraftsmashing sales recordsand becoming one of the biggest selling franchises in recent gaming history. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the game, which is still being updated by the studio, but there are many fans who likely can’t imagine a world without it.
Minecraftis available now on mobile devices, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
