As we've said, Minecraft with RTX's worlds are almost entirely path-traced with lighting and effects that offer extraordinary levels of detail to give the best image quality that is possible. If you're interested in knowing more, and want to learn about under the hood tech This article will provide a comprehensive overview of the most important effects.
Global Illumination
Precomputed lightmaps and image-based light Probes, Spherical Harmonics and Reflective Shadow Maps are used to light games. Artist-placed lights can also be used to provide illumination in areas where the above methods fail. While the results look great but the methods employed have a few flaws, the most notable of which is that dynamic lighting fails to bounce off or shine beyond the region that the light hits.
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For example, imagine an unlit room with bright light shining through the window. Traditional techniques illuminate anything that is directly illuminated by light. However the areas that are illuminated don't reflect light and thus do not reflect light. Consequently, they do not illuminate the game elements surrounding them.
With path tracing, we can accurately model the dynamic indirect diffuse illumination reflected by one or more indirect bounces off of surfaces in the scene and then have it interact and interplay with other effects ray-traced. Imagine sunlight shining onto a castle through stained glass windows with multiple colors blocks. It will reflect off the marble floor and illuminate the surrounding details. This could cause new contact hardening shadows from objects.