This time of year is particularly special, held aloft as a time for kindness and the spirit of charity. Regular people and business are encouraged to share and show human compassion to others. Even GPU front-runners Nvidia has been getting in on the act. Despite the controversy over the tech giant purchasing the UK chip firm ARM last year, it seems that Jensen Huang and his team are seeing the year out with an event that not only continues to showcase its own technology in one of the biggest games around, but helps to raise money while doing so.
According to a recent report, Nvidia is showing its charitable side with a Minecraft festive winter wonderland event that shows off the company's own ray-tracing capabilities. This end-of-year winter map, built by prolific creator Ushio Tokura, aka Dr_Bond, is set in three huge snow globes, featuring all the accouterments that many often associate with this time of year. There's even a blocky Santa Claus who comes bearing gifts in the form of quests. The event is also being done to raise money for charity, in this case, London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital, for which there is a replica of in "Winter World."
Fundraising and video games often go hand-in-hand. Earlier this year, a UK gaming charity raised nearly $85,000 for numerous important causes across the country. Let’s also not forget that the Games Done Quick events, which challenge participating speedrunners live on stream, are also responsible for raising millions over the years for all sorts of worthy causes. The aforementioned event taking place via Nvidia is open to offerings from anyone, with a donation page now live on Tiltify.
As for the Mojang open world sandbox game teaming up with Nvidia. Last year, Minecraft was updated with RTX, the ray-tracing technology created by "team green" which implements much more realistic lighting and shadow effects through the use of an algorithm. It's become something of an industry standard, especially among big budget, triple AAA games.
Along with this charitable event, the graphics card company is also looking to launch a series of hardware products in the new year, such as the RTX 3090 Ti which is due out in January. While this pairing between Nvidia and Minecraft is, on the surface, there to show off the RTX tech, it's also a way for people to support London's children's hospital, which will see the year out on a positive note, at least.