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Minecraft's Distant Horizons mod is well-known for its use of level of detail (LOD) to improve Java Edition rendering at a distance without causing significant performance issues. Now, the mod has gotten even better. According to the mod's creator, Jeseibel, on Gitlab, Distant Horizons can now utilize a variety of shader packs with the assistance of the Iris Shaders mod.
While the Distant Horizons mod for Minecraft doesn't support every known shader pack, it has already demonstrated compatibility with the likes of BSL and Reflective Vanilla shaders, as well as the forks for Rethinking Voxels and Complementary. As one might expect, the combination of LOD rendering and lighting/post-processing effects has resulted in some truly impressive visuals.
Distant Horizons and Iris Shaders bring Minecraft visuals to a new level
Using LOD, the Distant Horizons mod amplifies the rendering of the game's visuals by creating lower-detailed iterations of far-off terrain, blocks, and more. Doing so allows the game to render distant objects without increasing the render distance in Minecraft, which can typically cause a sizable performance impact depending on a player's platform hardware.
Moreover, Distant Horizons is still very compatible with many other Minecraft mods. Options like Terralith or Tectonic can result in improved terrain generation. When combined with Iris Shaders and Distant Horizons, the graphical quality can grow beyond leaps and bounds compared to Mojang's original set of visuals.
Distant Horizons' compatibility with mods is also helpful for players running lower-spec hardware. It works in tandem with performance-boosting mods like Sodium, and Distant Horizons' shader compatibility also includes lower-end shaders like Potato Shaders and VanillAA in case players are encountering performance issues when using more conventional shaders.
All in all, this development for Distant Horizons is a huge plus for the game's modding community, as the dedication of so many modders has been able to accomplish to bring a game that has existed for over a decade into a more modern form of presentation. Unfortunately, many of these mods are Java Edition exclusives, but there are signs of life on the Bedrock Edition front as well.
With the assistance of the Deferred Graphical Preview and RenderDragon, Bedrock Edition received shader support not long ago. Perhaps if Distant Horizons and Iris Shaders make their way to Bedrock in the future, the same great visuals players are experiencing in Java Edition at the moment can be witnessed by the Bedrock fandom as well.
It might be a pipe dream, all things considered, but players can always have hope for the future.
