Minecraft's latest beta adds granular audio sliders, expands the RTX ray tracing beta

Minecraft has a very active beta program, which allows Mojang Studios to test updates, issues fixes, and changes before they're released to the public. The latest beta update comes in the form up 1.16.200.53, which on the surface seems like a normal bug fixing beta with the addition of some important new granular audio controls, merely sneakily includes a major change that should excite players looking towards the future of Minecraft, specially on Windows 10.

First things first: the only real addition in this beta is the being of new audio sliders, which provide much more granular control over the diverse sounds in Minecraft, and include previews when yous alter audio levels through settings. This is a feature players have been asking for over the years, and should be a large boon non merely for players who were wishing for more control, but likewise for accessibility. Unfortunately, there aren't whatever more features sneaking over from the upcoming Caves and Cliffs Update, like with another recent Minecraft beta, merely information technology shouldn't exist long before see more from Minecraft's time to come major release.

The big news with this beta, however, is one snuck into this beta'southward changelog, which is the expansion of Minecraft with RTX, which utilizes ray tracing engineering science to add realistic lighting, shadows, reflections, and more to Minecraft, and represents the first major visual overhaul Minecraft has e'er really seen. With the newest beta, anyone playing on Windows ten with the necessary hardware (an RTX-uniform GPU from NVIDIA) will have access to ray tracing, rather than needing to enroll in a carve up beta that was e'er behind in new features and changes.

This does not utilise to Minecraft on the Xbox Series X and S, however. While this beta is for every platform that Minecraft: Boulder Edition has a beta on (Xbox, Windows 10, and Android), the ray tracing expansion only applies to Windows 10. Unfortunately, we still don't know for sure if Minecraft will see ray tracing on Microsoft'south powerful new consoles, the Xbox Series Ten and Xbox Series S, which practise support hardware accelerated ray tracing.

The full changelog for 1.16.200.53 includes:

New features

New audio options

Added a variety of book sliders for diverse sound categories (eg. hostile, blocks, weather etc.)
- These will play a preview of the relevant sounds in the chief settings menu, and will play the default click sound when in game

Ray tracing

Enabled Ray Tracing on Windows ten on GPUs with Raytracing Hardware Support
- Added Upscaling Options to Video Options
- Added Ray Tracing toggle Ray Tracing render altitude slider to video-settings

Bug fixes

Functioning & stability

Stock-still several crashes that could occur during gameplay
Fixed a bug where Minecraft would occasionally crash when loading a local globe

General

'Strawberry Blonde' color at present has correct name in the character creator
Fixed a bug where if the view bobbing setting was disabled the role player's mitt would still bob
Stock-still an issue where loot tables with a 'set_data' function produced incorrect loot items

Accessibility

Fixed an result where the Servers tab would not correctly read text-to-speech prompts when not signed into a Microsoft account
Fixed diverse issues where text-to-oral communication indices on the start screen were not correct
Fixed bug where user interface controls would be improperly indexed in text-to-speech for popup modals
Reduced transparency on top row of buttons in Impact UI to amend readability

Gameplay

Netherite Armor now gives a ninety percent reduction in Knockback

Mobs

Bees will no longer devious more than 22 blocks from their home Beehive

Graphics, textures, & user interface

Ghost items in the crafting grid now have a different colored background depending on item availability in the inventory
The Thespian Permissions menu can now be navigated using a controller regardless of the players permission level

Marketplace

Added various UI elements to communicate ray tracing capabilities in the Marketplace (Windows 10 Only)
- Resource packs in the Market place are now aware of ray tracing capabilities and will display a label indicating back up in the UI
- Attempting to purchase and/or download a resource pack that requires ray tracing volition notify the user of a purchasing mistake when that user does not accept the required min-spec hardware. In this instance, we communicate the missing min-spec hardware required to the histrion
Owned packs are now refreshed correctly later on restarting the game

A gaming masterpiece

Minecraft Bedrock Edition

Minecraft

Available everywhere you play.

Minecraft is an inarguable and complete success. Information technology has sold copies in the hundreds of millions, has a huge following of dedicated players, and lets you unlock your every creative desire. It's also available on every platform imaginable, including Xbox One, Windows x, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. Play with anyone, and play anywhere.

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