Posted in: Games, Minecraft, NVIDIA, Video Games | Tagged: minecraft, Mojang, nvidia

Nvidia Build Massive Minecraft Winter Wonderland

Published Tue, 21 Dec 2021 08:42:11 -0600

Last updated Wed, 22 Dec 2021 12:35:51 -0600

Nvidia decided to do something fun for the holidays as they have constructed a massive winter wonderland setting in Minecraft. The company has partnered with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity to launch this unique experience as they have created a holiday setting inside a snowglobe, all using Minecraft assets. Those looking to visit the 38-acre virtual world can do so for free as everything on the level is fully interactive including rides, attractions, and quests. You can even help out Santa with some tasks he has, and you can find hidden gems around the map that are references to classic and famous Christmas films. At the center of it all is a full recreation of Great Ormond Street Hospital, which they're working with to raise funds for, as you can donate to the charity here. Those looking to pick up the new map can do so here.

I just wanna ride that massive Minecraft Ferris wheel, courtesy of Nvidia. — I just wanna ride that massive *Minecraft* Ferris wheel, courtesy of Nvidia.

Utilising NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), real-time ray tracing stunningly simulates the physical behaviour of light, enabling reflections, shadows and other realistic lighting effects, as visitors are transported to a world offering a full winter wonderland and Santa's grotto experience with Santa himself for visitors to engage and interact with.

The world includes roller coasters, a Christmas village, frozen ice-skating lake, penguin postal service and petting zoo tent, with playable storylines and quests. Christmas film aficionados should also keep a lookout for Easter Egg homages to famous festive flicks such as Elf, It's A Wonderful Life and The Polar Express. Covering an area with a representative size of 155,000 square metres or 38 acres, the virtual wonderland is four times the size of the biggest real-world Christmas Market in Austria and took Ushio Tokura over 300 hours and more than 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 Christmas fundraising campaign, which seeks to bring seriously ill children one step closer to home. This includes, through funding state-of-the-art medical technology, pioneering research programmes into treatments and cures for rare conditions and patient and family support services. Money raised will also help bring Christmas to the hospital for children from across the UK whose treatment needs to continue over the festive season, as well as funding important services for GOSH staff working to care for patients and their families.