The latest update for Minecraft: Java Edition adds what Mojang calls “a large bug” – but don’t worry, it’s just an adorable honey bee. The new mobs are spawning as of the 19W34A snapshot, and they open up a whole bunch of possibilities for collecting honey and building a bee-powered farm.
Bees are neutral mobs that will keep to themselves unless you mess with them or their nests – if you get stung, the bee will lose its stinger and eventually die. Bee nests will naturally spawn in flower forests, plains, and sunflower plains biomes, and bees will seek out flowers, grab some pollen, and add a level of honey to the nest every time they return.
You can use a bottle on a nest to get honey, or you can construct your own bee hives using honeycombs and wood planks to build a honey farm wherever you want it. You can keep bees calm with smoke by placing a campfire near a nest or hive.BEST PC GAMING HARDWARE DEALS TODAYLogitech G502 HERO High Performance Gaming Mouse
Those bees will look even better with the official addition of ray tracing to Minecraft – not a bad trade for that cancelled graphics pack, all things considered.
In July the first closed beta for Minecraft Earth was released to select residents in London, Seattle, Stockholm, and Tokyo. Today Mojang's augmented reality version of Minecraft has finally arrived on the Play Store as a pre-registration listing, and it would appear that another beta wave is going to take place next week. While Mojang hasn't stipulated whether this will be an open or closed beta, a recent tweet from the official Minecraft Earth account points towards a sign-up page, so I'm guessing invites will still be necessary to get in, just like the previous wave.Now here's the thing. It would appear that today's pre-reg listing has little to do with today's announcement of another beta round. So if you'd like to get into the next wave, you'll want to sign up on Mojang's official website, and if you'd like to receive a notification whenever the game is officially released on Android, you'll want to click the pre-reg button in the Play Store widget below this article.
We still don't know when Minecraft Earth will officially debut, though the numerous beta waves and today's pre-reg listing should be a sign that we are inching ever-closer to that date, whatever it may be. Currently, the new Play Store listing states that in-app purchases will be included with the release, but since the title isn't available yet, no prices are offered. Clearly, this leaves many of us with a lot of unanswered questions, so it's my hope that the next beta brings along a few more clues. Finger's crossed, maybe this time I'll get in. If you'd like to try your luck, feel free to sign up for beta access on Mojang's site.
We've been following the evolution of hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing for some time now here at Digital Foundry – and one of the most spectacular demos we've seen actually took the form of Sonic Ether's RT shader mod for Minecraft, which brute-forced full path-tracing into the Java version of the classic Mojang title. It's brilliant stuff, and although slow, it will work on any modern GPU.
But as good as it is, we had to wonder – what kind of improvement would we see with full hardware acceleration? What if Mojang itself incorporated full path tracing into the engine itself? The developer duly delivered at Gamescom 2019 and my colleagues John Linneman and Alex Battaglia played the early code, handing in the extensive deep dive into the demo found on this page.
Similar to our own work with the mod, the developers put together their own custom maps to showcase the effects of full path tracing within the Minecraft engine. In our video, you'll get to see both of these creations. One of them showcases how the new technology interacts with the existing, older-style textures – which are typically based on 64×64 textures – but the video kicks off with a look at path tracing combined with higher resolution block art, reaching a maximum of 1024×1024.
Nvidia's Gamescom trailer reveal for the path traced Minecraft was impressive enough, but in this extended playthrough, DF's John Linneman and Alex Battaglia guide you through the entire content of the demo, showcasing various effects and explaining how they work.Subscribe to our YouTube channel
In all cases, light interacts accurately with the materials and conditions in place, to the point where the developers accidentally discovered that the classic camera obscura pinhole effect could be replicated in-game. But this is just one of many remarkable phenomena path tracing brings to the table – and in the embedded video below, you'll see John and Alex run the gamut of the demo, experimenting with its various effects, and even pushing the implementation beyond its current limits.
And hitting those limits is easily possible right now, most because Mojang has only been working on Minecraft's official path tracing implementation since April (coincidentally (?) when Sonic Ether's Minecraft mod first appeared), so there's still a long way to go before the RTX support rolls out generally. However, as a taste of how transformative full path tracing is, this is the most impressive demo we've seen – it's a more total, more complete implementation in a game than anything else out there, even more so than the impressive Quake 2 RTX.
All of which is to say that checking out the video above is highly recommended! The DF Gamescom team sat down to talk with the developers in more depth, and we'll be bringing you that interview soon, along the more coverage from the show.
Minecraft Earth is scheduled to make its Android debut next week, expanding the closed beta test that kicked off back in July. Microsoft's upcoming augmented reality (AR) spin on its best-selling blockbuster has garnered notable attention, merging its creative sandbox with the real world. The upcoming Android release brings the app to more beta registrants, ahead of a broader public release going forward.
The upcoming change will provide a chance of playing to those registered via the Minecraft Earth website. As with prior Minecraft Earth tests, developer Mojang has committed to five cities: Seattle, London, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Mexico City. While the final launch sets sights worldwide, early beta testing locks the experience down to a pool of hotspots with no plans to increase. As a result, Android tests will see similar restrictions, fixated on the same five regions.
Minecraft Earth also requires an Android device running Android 7 Nougat or later, alongside support for Android's ARCore augmented reality platform. Android's open nature makes it harder to identify all Android 7+ phones compatible, although most released in recent are covered. You can check if your Android phone meets Minecraft Earth's requirements using our handy guide.
Invited iOS beta applicants experienced up to a month of trials, with August 26 bringing a full server reset, wiping player progress ahead of the Android launch. Tapping into real-world map data, the game sees players collecting nearby virtual blocks, before scaling AR creations. With Pokemon GO changing mobile gaming back in 2016, Microsoft has high hopes for its AR adventure.
A Valley High School student has recreated downtown Des Moines in stunningly exact detail within the realm of a popular video game.
Sean Eddy, 16, is a resident of Beaverdale. Over the past two and a half years, mostly during summer breaks from school, he has worked on meticulously recreating the downtown Des Moines area within the open-ended, world-building video game Minecraft.
The 801 Grand building in downtown Des Moines recreated in Minecraft by Sean Eddy. (Photo: ProjectDSM/ Special to the Register)
After recreating Stillwell Junior High School when he was in seventh grade for a school project, Eddy decided he would get more ambitious with his Minecraft projects. He started what would become the downtown project by recreating the 801 Grand building.
After opening up a server that would allow people to publicly see his downtown Des Moines recreation project in 2017, Eddy has spent the majority of the time since working on the project, spending the past summer, in particular, going back over previously built buildings and adding more specific details.
In order to faithfully recreate intricate details and the interiors of buildings, Eddy has looked to Des Moines Register photos of areas like the Tea Room at Wilkins, Cowles Commons redesign and even those of the Younkers fire in order to capture downtown as precisely as possible.
In a video posted to the ProjectDSM YouTube channel, Eddy has shown exactly how meticulously he's recreated the downtown landscape.
Though Eddy does all of the exterior detailing himself, his friends Henry Shires and Luke Okland have contributed with designing interiors and managing the technicalities of running a server for the public.
Though he's about to embark on a particularly challenging year of high school, Eddy is looking ahead to eventually expanding east and west in his downtown project to work on the Court Avenue District and Pappajohn Sculpture Park areas.
The sever the downtown area is stored on is entirely public and accessible to anyone with a Minecraft client for PC compatible with the server. The ProjectDSM website has more information for those interested in exploring the recreation.
Screenshot from the ProjectDSM Minecraft recreation of downtown Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Project DSM/ Special to the Register)
The latest AR game that’s set to hit smartphones is Microsoft’s Minecraft Earth. Today, Minecraft Earth has finally arrived on the Google Play Store for Android, but it’s only in beta for the time being.
Just like with other apps and games that have used the functionality, pre-registering for Minecraft Earth on the Google Play Store will send you a notification as soon as the game has been released for download. There’s no date just yet as to when Minecraft Earth will debut on Android, but now that the game is listed in the Play Store probably means it will be sooner rather than later.
If you want to give it a shot even sooner, Minecraft Earth is available now in beta for Android. You’ll need to sign up for the closed beta and have a Microsoft or Xbox Live account to participate. Sign-ups are now available on the official Minecraft website.
Minecraft Earth should work on most Android devices, so long as they support ARCore and running Android 7.0 Nougat and above.
Discover a new dimension of Minecraft as you create, explore, and survive in the real world. Join a community of builders and explorers spanning the planet, collect resources for your builds, craft in augmented reality and then place them at life-size. You can even team up with others for mini-adventures!
