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Minecraft players looking for some improved visual quality in the game have often relied on the use of texture packs and shaders that improve things like lighting and physics to give the game a more visually pleasing look.
As of 2022, there are a ton of shaders available, thanks to painstaking work by dedicated community members. Each shader carries a somewhat different appearance despite all of them seeking to improve the game's visual quality in multiple ways.
Paired with texture packs, players can enter Minecraft and experience it in an entirely different light than they had previously. If players have the hardware, downloading and trying out some shaders might be worth looking at.
Minecraft: Top visual shader packs for 2022
Shaders for Lower Performance Computers
Vanilla Plus
Improving overall visual quality while keeping Minecraft's core appearance intact, Vanilla Plus Shaders is great for lower-end hardware that may not be able to handle the more powerful shaders. This pack enhances Minecraft's look without anything crazy or inundating the screen in bloom effects and post-processing.
Some players and reviewers think that this is how Minecraft should look all the time as far as lighting and shading effects go, but the only way for players to agree or disagree is to try them out themselves.
Sildur’s Shaders
This pack provides gorgeous rays of light without requiring too much out of your GPU. It also provides clear water, shadows, and moving foliage. This shader can bring Minecraft to another level.
Sora’s Shaders
While Sora’s Shaders does not change too much from Vanilla Minecraft, it can offer a baseline shader experience by not asking for too much from your PC. Don’t be fooled however, this shader pack provides an upgrade to the water, grass profiles, skylines, and much more!
Shaders for High Performance Computers
Beyond Belief
This Minecraft shader pack's title may seem like an exaggeration. But sometimes, staring out at its revised water appearance can be astonishing. Such impressive water can exist within Minecraft's engine is frankly surprising.
Beyond Belief may have fairly straightforward lighting and skyboxes compared to other shader packs, but its reimagining of water likely stands as one of the most significant improvements out of any pack available.
ProjectLUMA
Improving the in-game visuals significantly similar to KUDA's well-known shaders, ProjectLUMA features a minimal performance hit. Even when ratcheted up in its settings, this shader pack's impact on most hardware will hardly be noticeable.
There are exceptions, of course, depending on a player's graphics card and processor, but one of ProjectLUMA's greatest strengths is its accessibility and wide-ranging use on different hardware and operating system platforms.
If other shaders are tanking a player's FPS, they may want to give ProjectLUMA a shot and see if it helps.
Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders
Softening the game's hardest edges in just about any location, Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) is a jack-of-all-trades shader pack that performs admirably in nearly imaginable visual facet.
SEUS also performs exceptionally well on different hardware, though it can use some tweaks here and there depending on the quality of a player's machine.
Regardless, many players who first enter the world of shader packs begin with SEUS, and many still swear by it today.
BSL
Undoubtedly one of the most amazing shader packs available that many aspire to emulate, BSL shaders are certified eye candy and make for great videos and screenshots.
It certainly requires high-performance hardware, but the result is a marvel to behold. Featuring volumetric lighting, blooms, real-time dynamic shadows, anti-aliasing, and different versions of cloud and water changes, BSL is highly customizable and looks gorgeous even on default settings.
Players who enjoy BSL can even download the Complementary Shaders pack, which further augments BSL's capabilities. There's a lot to love about BSL and not much to nitpick past its performance impact.
