RayTrace ShaderPack
Most Minecraft players see the letters "RTX" and assume they need an expensive graphics card with dedicated ray tracing cores. The RayTrace ShaderPack proves otherwise. This shaderpack fakes the look of hardware ray tracing using a clever rendering trick called screen-space ray marching, and the results are convincing enough that you will forget you are running on plain OpenGL.
What RayTrace ShaderPack Actually Does
Java Edition shaderpacks cannot access DXR or Vulkan ray tracing, because the game renders through OpenGL. Instead of tracing rays against real geometry, the RayTrace ShaderPack marches rays against the depth buffer every frame. That depth buffer is essentially a snapshot of everything visible on screen, and the shader uses it to calculate reflections and a one-bounce global illumination approximation. It is the same fundamental technique behind SEUS PTGI, Complementary Reimagined, and BSL, which is why the overall image quality feels familiar if you have used those packs before.
The trade-off is honest: reflections only exist for objects already on screen, so something hidden behind you will not appear in a puddle. In practice, most players never notice during normal gameplay.
Visual Features That Stand Out
- Ray-marched reflections that follow the actual shape of terrain, water, and builds
- Diffuse global illumination with a one-bounce approximation, so shaded areas pick up color from nearby surfaces
- Temporally denoised real sunlight diffuse lighting, which keeps the image stable instead of flickering
- Ray-traced-style soft shadows that fade naturally with distance
- Near-mirror water reflections that turn lakes and oceans into usable surfaces
- Two-pass bloom combined with ACES tonemapping for a filmic, high-contrast look
Performance Profiles and Settings
Four quality profiles ship with the pack: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Low is aimed at mid-range GPUs and disables the most expensive ray marching steps, while Ultra pushes reflection distance and sample counts hard. Every major effect also has an individual slider, so you can keep mirror-like water but drop shadow resolution, or the reverse. If your framerate tanks, start by lowering the reflection quality before touching anything else, since that is usually the heaviest cost.
If you would rather skip manual file management entirely, the foxygame.net launcher handles it for you: it installs RayTrace ShaderPack in a single click, keeps it updated automatically, and warns you when a new Minecraft release breaks compatibility.
Supported Minecraft Versions and Loaders
Minecraft 1.16 through 1.21
The pack targets modern Java Edition releases, with builds maintained for the 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, and 1.21 branches. Older versions still work but may miss features tied to newer rendering changes.
OptiFine or Iris
You need either OptiFine or Iris. Sodium paired with Iris also works and is generally the fastest combination, especially on AMD cards. OptiFine remains the simpler option if you already use it for other tweaks.
How to Install RayTrace ShaderPack for Minecraft
Installation takes about a minute once your loader is ready.
- Install OptiFine or Iris for your Minecraft version and launch the game once
- Open the options menu and locate the shaderpacks folder, or navigate to .minecraft/shaderpacks/ manually
- Drop the RayTrace ShaderPack zip file into that folder without extracting it
- Go to Video Settings, then Shaders, and select the pack from the list
- Adjust the quality profile and sliders to match your hardware
If the pack does not appear in the list, confirm the zip is in the correct folder and that you are running the modded profile rather than vanilla. When you download RayTrace ShaderPack, always grab the build that matches your exact Minecraft version, since shader code is tightly coupled to rendering internals.
Is It Worth Using?
RayTrace ShaderPack for Minecraft delivers the moody, reflective look people associate with RTX trailers without demanding an RTX-capable GPU. The screen-space approach has limits, and very old hardware will still struggle at Ultra, but the four profiles and granular sliders give you room to find a balance. Pair it with a resource pack that suits its lighting, and your world will look dramatically different the next time the sun sets over a lake.