The world’s largest winter festival opened its virtual doors for the public on December 23rd to experience the Christmas festivities – all in a Minecraft world.
The Nvidia RTX Winter World, commissioned by Nvidia and built by Minecraft world builder, Ushio Tokura, will give families across the globe a festive immersive experience to explore. The company will also offer an opportunity to raise funds for Nvidia’s charity partner, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.
Utilizing Nvidia’s GeForce RTX GPU, real-time ray tracing stunningly simulates the physical behavior of light, enabling reflections, shadows, and other realistic lighting effects, as users are transported to a whole new virtual world offering a full winter wonderland and Santa’s grotto experience.
The world includes roller coasters, a Christmas village, ice-skating lake, a penguin postal service, and a petting zoo tent, with playable storylines and quests.
Covering an area with a size of 155,000 square meters or 38 acres, the virtual wonderland is 4 times the size of the biggest real-world Christmas Market in Austria. This took Ushio Tokura more than 300 hours and 30 million individual blocks to complete.
The world also features a full recreation of the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) building and visitors will be able to donate via an in-game QR code to contribute to the charity’s ‘Home for Christmas”.
Liz Tait, director of fundraising at GOSH Charity says:
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Nvidia who have created this amazing experience for families across the world. We are so grateful for any donation’s visitors to this incredibly festive winter wonderland, and those joining the charity stream, are able to make it. Every child should have the chance to be at home with their families for Christmas Day, by donating to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity this Christmas, you’ll be helping fund vital resources that can help get seriously ill children one step closer to home as well as helping to bring that special Christmas magic to children at GOSH whose treatment needs to continue over the festive season.”
Families can download the Nvidia RTX Winter World in Minecraft now at planetminecraft.com.
