How to make Minecraft look realistic in Bedrock Edition

Can Minecraft: Bedrock Edition be made to look more realistic? Many players may wonder, particularly since shader support is currently in a murky area for Bedrock's release versions across multiple platforms. Thus, making Bedrock look realistic can be a tougher job compared to Java Edition, but there are some workarounds to consider.

Thankfully, for Minecraft Bedrock fans, many resource packs available online can simulate a similar effect to shaders. Moreover, several resource packs introduce higher-definition textures that look more realistic than the base vanilla textures; they even come in a wide variety of art styles to suit a player's standards of what is considered realistic.

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How to make Minecraft Bedrock look more realistic with resource packs

Resource packs can introduce higher fidelity visuals for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition (Image via Mojang)

Thanks to the introduction of Render Dragon to Minecraft Bedrock previews, players can still receive shader support and utilize high-resolution PBR textures through resource packs. It's also possible to install non-PBR or RTX (ray tracing) resource packs in vanilla without using Bedrock Edition previews, so the choice of a realistic resource pack may come down to a player's hardware.

If fans have a high-performance device with ray tracing support, they can use the RTX/PBR resource packs in Minecraft Bedrock previews to activate shader effects and ray tracing. Otherwise, players can simply pick high-resolution resource packs that are non-RTX/PBR and install them to their non-preview version of the game. Either way, more realistic visuals are possible to a degree.

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Installing Non-PBR/RTX Resource Packs to Minecraft Bedrock

Many resource packs can look realistic without RTX/PTB (Image via LAZZA MCPE/YouTube)

For this process, we'll examine how to install and activate realistic resource packs for the standard version of Minecraft Bedrock. The steps are pretty straightforward and require little more than selecting and downloading a resource pack before activating it in the game.

The following steps should see this process through to fruition:

1. Begin by heading to a resource pack site like MCPEDL or Resourcepack.net and checking out some texture or shader packs you'd like to download. Even though the shaders for vanilla Bedrock won't be "true" shaders, they simulate similar effects and don't require any additional work to activate.
2. Download the selected resource packs from their download pages. You should receive a .Mcpack file. If the pack comes as a .zip file instead, you can right-click and choose to extract it on Windows PCs, and the resulting folder should contain the .Mcpack file. On mobile devices running Bedrock, you may need to use a program like 7zip to extract the .zip archives if your operating system doesn't allow you to do so by default with a long tap.
3. Once you have your .Mcpack file, either right-click it and choose to open it with Minecraft on PC or simply tap it on mobile and choose to open it in the same way. Either way, the game should open and start importing your resource packs.
4. When the resource packs are finished importing, open your settings from the main menu and select the Global Resources tab. Click/tap My Packs and select the resource packs you'd like to use, then press the activate button. Their new visuals should be reflected in-game when you exit your settings or enter a Minecraft world.

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Installing PBR/RTX Resource Packs for Minecraft Bedrock

All things considered, the process of installing PBR/RTX packs is largely similar to ordinary Minecraft: Bedrock Edition. However, certain settings need to be accessed in Bedrock Preview to harness the full scope of their effects. Specifically, players will need to activate Render Dragon and switch their graphics to the Deferred Technical Preview to carry this out.

The steps outlined below should accomplish this, though keep in mind that Render Dragon and the Deferred Technical Preview are still experimental, so you may occasionally experience graphical glitches:

1. Start as you would with the steps above, downloading the resource packs you prefer (though they'll be RTX/PBR enabled this time) and receiving your .Mcpack files.
2. Instead of opening the .Mcpack files with standard Minecraft Bedrock, open them with your Preview program. On mobile devices, you'll need to opt into the Preview Program via Google Play or Apple Testflight to set your game to Preview instead of vanilla.
3. Whatever the case, the importing process should be carried out as it would for other resource packs. Next, return to the main menu and create a new world.
4. In the world settings, navigate to your Experimental tab and activate "Render Dragon Features for Creators." Head to your Resource Packs tab, click on "owned" and activate the packs you'd like to use in your world, then create/enter the world.
5. Once in the game, open your settings and navigate to the Video tab. Scroll down the video window on the right, click on the "graphics mode" button, and select Deferred Technical Preview, set any additional graphics settings you'd like, then return to the game. If the steps have been followed correctly, the PBR/RTX resource packs should activate.

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That's all there is to it! Hopefully, Mojang will implement full shader, RTX, and PBR support in the immediate future for Bedrock Edition, so players can simply activate the resource packs they like in the standard version of Bedrock without needing to fiddle with Render Dragon in experimental previews.