NVIDIA constructs a virtual Winter Wonderland for charity in Minecraft

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The Winter Wonderland contains interactive rides, food stands, attractions, and Santa's grotto

Minecraft Nvidia Winter Wonderland
(Image credit: NVIDIA)

NVIDIA has helped create a virtual Winter Wonderland in Minecraft to raise money for a children’s charity Great Ormand Street Hospital. 

The "world’s largest winter wonderland experience" was commissioned by NVIDIA, designed by Minecraft world builder Ushio Tokura (aka Dr_Bond on Twitter,) and took 300 hours and 30 million individual blocks to build, apparently spanning a virtual space of 38 acres - that’s four times the size of the biggest real-world Christmas market in Austria. 

The Winter Wonderland will offer players a range of things to experience including interactive rides, virtual food stands, and attractions, as well as Santa’s grotto - which will even feature Santa himself for visitors to engage with. 

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Some of the highlights include roller coasters, a Christmas village, ice-skating, and a petting zoo tent, all with playable storylines and quests. That's not to mention a tonne of Christmas film Easter Eggs including nods to classics such as Elf, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Polar Express. 

What makes this project even more worthwhile is the fact that NVIDIA has partnered with the UK charity Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity during its Christmas fundraising campaign. Players can visit the virtual world and donate to the campaign with a QR code in-game. 

According to the event’s press release, the Winter Wonderland utilizes NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX GPU to enable real-time ray tracing which simulates the physical behavior of light, reflections, shadows, and other realistic lighting effects. So not only will there be tones to explore in the Minecraft world, but everything will also look beautifully festive at the same time. 

NVIDIA’s Winter Wonderland is available to explore now and can be downloaded from the Planet Minecraft website. 

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Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.