Minecraft never looked this good. || Distant Horizons 2.0 + Iris Shaders

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Thumbnail by: ‪@gutermaniac‬
Edited by: ‪@BillyDaBongo‬
Pebble art by: midnightmorpha.carrd.co/
=Summary=-
Distant Horizons is a mod that adds a Level Of Detail (LOD) system to Minecraft. This implementation renders simplified chunks outside of the normal render distance allowing for an increased render distance without harming performance.
DISTANT HORIZONS:
modrinth.com/mod/distanthoriz...
IRIS SHADERS:
modrinth.com/mod/iris
#forge #minecraft #moddedminecraft
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/ itsdrowned
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If You've Read This Far Comment Pebble :)

[@Distant_Horizons]

Thanks for inviting me, it was a blast! - James

[@Cygnus_MC]

James my beloved

[@Night-Rider101]

Cyngus my beloved

[@LinkRammer]

The GOAT

[@nezkoanim]

THIS IS AWESOMEEE

[@dnch]

great work James, also you sound like John Carmack:D

[@commander3494]

Now we just need a mod that fixes worldgen speed once and for all... it's gonna take ages to wait for all those chunks to generate normally!

[@enrikes9877]

Distant horizon doesn't generate real chunks so it generates way faster than vanilla

[@zeddddd2846]

You can also use 3rd part programs to pre-gen those chunks so when you load in you already have a 10k x 10k radius generated. (customizable range of course and it does tend to take time)

[@atlas7309]

There are mods or programs to pre-generate chunks.

[@MrGenius2]

we already have it. search " Minecraft's FPS is finally FIXED " the mod is called nvidium and is used on top of distant horizons

[@thegrimmtv3532]

Just use pregen mod/plugins bruh

[@SpacEagle17]

As a shader developer I will add some more information as to what happened behind the scenes: Distant Horizons only had initial comparability with optifine and shaderpacks as iris as you mentioned pursues the approach of rather not rendering something than rendering something which might be very broken. After many requests by users IMS added initial distant horizons support where lod chunks would now also render with iris and shaders enabled. Now matching optifine's behavior. This implementation is already released in the current public full release of iris. The only problem remaining now was a visual problem. On both optifine and iris the lod chunks looked like normal Minecraft vanilla shaded chunks while the actual render distance had the shader effects applied. By default there was even no transition between the normal chunks with the shader effects from the shaderpack and the lod chunks with no effects. There would be just a cutoff and an ugly border. Shaderpack devs had to change how their shaders work in order to support this. They would near the edge of the normal chunks fade out to vanilla shading making the transition smooth. Effects like border fog and do on would also be disabled. This was at a time where we still only had basic support and we on the shader side could not detect when a user is using distant horizons. This means that we had to tie those changes in rendering to a shader option the user has to manually change which isn't ideal. Because if a user wasn't using distant horizons it would look bad if the shader would fade to vanilla looking terrain at the edge of the render distance. That's why it had to be a toggle. At that time we had two big issues: 1) Lod chunks look like vanilla chunks and not like shader chunks. The shaderpack also had no idea that lod chunks actually existed. This was all done on iris. Iris only rendered the lod chunks and shaderpacks to make it look good had to fade out their effects. 2) We had to rely on users in changing a shader option to make their game look good with distant horizons or make a shaderpack designed for distant horizons but it will look bad without the mod. Now we advance time a bit and we come to the current state: Iris has even further improved distant horizons support. It now is much better than what we had before when it was on par with optifine. Iris has fixed the problems I listed above. Through the dev versions of iris and Distant Horizons (and in the next update of both mods) shaderpacks with iris can now detect if a user is using distant horizons or not with the #ifdef DISTANT_HORIZONS preprocessor define which gets automatically defined when iris detects Distant Horizons and then us on the shader side won't have to rely on users changing shader option to make things work but we can now implement it in a way so it happens automatically. Furthermore, what is even more impressive, shaderpacks are now able to render onto the lod chunks. Just like they are able to with vanilla chunks. It is more limited than normal Minecraft chunks but that doesn't matter as they are lod chunks. Lod chunks no longer have to look like vanilla and can look like the shaderpack looks in normal chunks. We have normal data, lighting data, even mini IDs which give us a basic understanding which blocks are which: so we can distinguish leaves from dirt or from lava to apply different effects on them. Shadows are now also possible. IMS worked really closely with shader developers to ask for feedback and suggestions of what features we would need to make it work. To summarize: iris will from now on offer a better distant horizons and shaderpack compatibility than optifine and previous iris versions as shaderpacks are now able to interact with distant horizons chunks.

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thanks for the extra info! I did talk to IMS but i didnt want to go into too much depth, but this is cool to learn!

[@SpacEagle17]

@@Cygnus_MC You're very much welcome! It was a nice informative video! I just wanted to give some cool insights about what happened behind the scenes and how much it has improved over time to what we have now

[@kait3n10]

@@SpacEagle17 if you don't mind, what shader are you working on?

[@SpacEagle17]

@@kait3n10 I am one of the 2 the developers of Euphoria Patches, an add-on for Complementary Shaders. Available on Curseforge and Modrinth. It is distributed as a mod though because of licensing reasons and some more reasons explained on the mod download page.

[@kait3n10]

@@SpacEagle17 That's impressive, I really like the aurora colours affecting the landscape. I can't wait to try it out with distant horizons later. Thanks!

[@owerpovered3330]

Distant Horizons, Nvidium, Irıs and Sodium teams should work together for the ultimate performance mod.

[@JustRehan.]

Fr

[@NatoBoram]

Nvidium is worthless since it's vendor-locked to Nvidia, better find a real cross-platform alternative

[@bennyboiii1196]

If you use Nvidium and DH together the game crashes. This probably because Nvidium takes control of server render distance. Plus, it's basically redundant with DH anyway other than a few smaller optimizations, I ran Nvidium and DH and i can say the only reason i still run Nvidium and C2ME over DH is because of some bugs in DH that annoy me.

[@_nukeohio]

@@NatoBoram Mad cause bad

[@IAmAChildMurderer]

Then add the Isle Of Berk Mod for majestic Dragons

[@CERISTHEDEV]

Dude to me the coolest use for distant horizons is seeing the hermitcraft maps in there entirety Like being able to see all bases from all places

[@DarkChaosMC]

Y’all this will be the ultimate combo if nvidium adds shader support, I don’t use shaders because I sacrifice LOD chunks and faster chunk loading

[@Cygnus_MC]

Actually the performance impact is rather minimal, ive tested it on a 3060ti, a 1050ti and my very old intergrated laptop. Shaders only lost me around 5-10fps on the latter two and had no inpact on my main rig

[@bacon_with_brussels_sprout]

​@@Cygnus_MC dam, What shader is that?? And How?? I don't even bother running shaders on my minecraft because it lags so much even with so many optimization mods

[@nikkiofthevalley]

​@@bacon_with_brussels_sproutDistant Horizons is how. Distant Horizons decreases the detail the further away a chunk is, which massively decreases the amount of computation required for far away chunks, and isn't really noticeable unless you zoom in.

[@SnrubSource]

Distant Horizons is useless if you use Nvidium anyways

[@bacon_with_brussels_sprout]

@@nikkiofthevalley Im asking how the shaders didn't impact so much performance, Distant horizons on low end systems (confirmed by my i5 5th gen laptop with a geforce 840m) can cause more stutters than if you just played on lower render distance. Im guessing his integrated laptop is way better than mine to not have suffered that much fps drop

[@Mo_Mauve]

I just happened to search "distant horizons" again on a whim when this video was 6 hours old.

[@THEcoolGAMER60]

buuuuurrrp

[@Cygnus_MC]

Welcome to insanity

[@theseangle]

Your comment is 1mo ago while the video is 4 weeks ago. Wha???

[@Cygnus_MC]

@@theseangle at the time he commented it was 6 hours old

[@SlamTheDragonPersonal]

now, we wait for nvidium compatibility

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thats up for nvidium to code in

[@some_doofus]

Man I want that so bad. To get that kind of performance with the insane render distance of DH *and* shaders? Minecraft 2.0 right there

[@PiyushSingh-qs8yc]

DH compatibility took 3 years to come and still in alpha and I talked about nvidium compatibility in iris and cortex discord and they are saying insanely hard because they have to overhaul iris to support mesh shading so I think we'll have to wait 10 years

[@Stong1337]

best option is probs just just make new code for nvidium. Weird if more modders worked together theey could probs make there own minecraft @@PiyushSingh-qs8yc

[@SlamTheDragonPersonal]

@@PiyushSingh-qs8yc as someone who's learning how 3D graphics work, I can feel their pain 😭

[@Jorge.ALXNDR]

Minecraft 2.0 is being made and Mojang is not giving a shlt

[@flpgus]

Been following you for a while now, and bro I BET this video will absolutely blow your channel up, mark my words! 😊

[@Cygnus_MC]

Lets hope so :)

[@puppergump4117]

Allahu Akbar

[@flpgus]

​@@Cygnus_MC BRO I TOLD YOU, IT'S BEEN 8 DAYS AND THIS IS NOW YOUR MOST VIEWED VIDEO!! Huge congrats!!!!!! 🎉

[@EliBallin]

@@flpgusu predicted that shi no way 💀

[@flpgus]

@@EliBallin told ya 😎

[@anoukk_]

I remember the nay sayers before these lod mods were a thing. People have wanted lod for minecraft for a very long time but a lot of people seemed to be very convinced that it wasn't possible in minecraft for some reason.

[@matthewbarabas3052]

its possible, but man, does it look obvious and bad....

[@LunamrathP]

@@matthewbarabas3052 Hottest take of all time.

[@Ceereeal]

WAIT THEYRE MAKING IRIS SHADERS COMPATIBLE WITH IT NOW YES YES YES FINALLY Optifabric has been broken for me for so long so I couldn’t use shaders + DH but now I FINALLY CAN HOLY SHIT

[@Ceereeal]

update: I tried it and it was BEAUTIFUL but I must wait for other versions to come out. I will have patience

[@miliIguess]

@@Ceereealwdym tried it if. It hasn’t released yet right.

[@andyraldp173]

Im trying to install all in my minecraft and I have errors that I don't know how to solve. Can u help me?@@Ceereeal

[@Ceereeal]

@@miliIguess both DH and Iris released alpha versions on the Iris shaders discord, I looked though and I’m not sure where they are now though

[@plastered_crab]

Love love loooooooove this partnership of these two amazing mods! Both teams have done amazing things for Minecraft with this

[@starly1974]

This looks absolutely amazing. It felt to me for a long time that that since Minecraft changed It's terrain generation from beta the world never looked that good. Because it became more realistic and flat requiring high render distance to fully appreciate how it looks. Lower render distance isn't that big of a deal when you have a terrain with a lot of verticality

[@jared_per]

This is probably my favorite mod. I didn't even know what I was missing without it. MC needs naitive support for this.

[@lipetodi7454]

Absolutely amazing, can't wait to try this combo!!

[@Juha-th3go]

This is amazing. Not only I was astonished by the visual it provides, I was deeply impressed by how much project quality increases by just making highly maintainable code.

[@bluebark146]

Easily one of my favorite mods of all time. Ive been playing it with iris jank included, so seeing actual compatibility so close is exciting

[@Cre4tor.]

This just insanity. Thank you for this video

[@hahahamamamama2535]

Hey CygnusMC. I love your modded videos. Especially the hisotry of modding loaders and especially news like this about Distant Horizons with shaders. Keep working bro you are going places! Much Love

[@its_me_r1m]

Your video Quality is insane dude!, but your so underrated. This video for sure will blow up, I hope so!

[@levihinsen1917]

This is huge! Subbed and turned on notifications cuz I really want to see how thus combo progresses

[@_TheCoolCat]

Hello CygnusMC! it is absolutely crazy how fast you've grown since that mineplex video! I haven't been keeping up with Minecraft lately (unfortunately). but I came across your channel just today and I'm really surprised and super happy with how much you've grown from 600 subscribers to 10k! congrats, man!!

[@Cygnus_MC]

Hey man, thanks for checking back in! Its been nuts!

[@tacticalassaultanteater9678]

Insane collab, mad respect to the Iris and DH devs for reconciling these two very different core engine modifications!

[@redouble_]

Hey! I just wanted to say, I've been carrying the task of managing server hosting by myself for a large community for 5 years and your channel is really helping me stay informed and entertaining. Thank you so much! Keep up the good work

[@thomasbroadbent9518]

Cool video man! Great interview, glad I found this channel

[@Cygnus_MC]

Thanks for taking the time to check me out!

[@Nasrul260]

Finally! Distant Horizons have shader support! I've tried using it before and most shaders just couldn't support it unfortunately. I'm glad that there's finally a compatibility with Iris Shaders!

[@etis398]

I like that in the video you interview the actual developers behind it!

[@kait3n10]

Wait, this is one day old?? I've been waiting so long for this, time to get back to Minecraft after a couple years break!

[@JustDoom]

i love this mod, used it for a couple years and its great!

[@Reheight]

I think it’s amazing that you’re not only showing us the mod we’re supporting but also the creators and developers we’re supporting/working with. Sometimes it’s nice to hear the mind of other developers, this is a lovely project and it’s so cool to see such a passionate project continuing on in a game that’s been around for so long. I think James really understates how stressful being a software engineer can be, there’s burnout sure, but he’s also a problem solver primarily and most of his day is spent solving problems, it will always become frustrating somehow at some point, which normally leads to burnout. The fact that he balances this with a normal job is so inspiring to many people, I’m sure.

[@plaonder]

The mod is very quickly becoming good for casual play! I haven't been able to get myself to use it due to the issues outlined in this video but with shader support and the issue with black voids appearing as chunks unload being fixed I can see myself using this in casual play

[@kerbalx8023]

It's crazy what optimization can do!

[@davioliva7088]

I have picked mod development recently. It is INSANE how modders will get these projects done WHILE HAVING A JOB. Thank for you everyone who has ever put out a mod out there

[@kcscustom9759]

This is very exciting! I love distant horizons, I’ve been using it constantly since it came out.

[@KremsonKhan]

Two of my must have Mods Finally working together! 🤩

[@boboftibia]

They should team up with the person who does Dregora(?) the land generation mod. This would be a team combination like no other. Can you imagine the worlds they would create?

[@Cygnus_MC]

Actually i think that works Totally fine! The only thing that might not render correctly is the block data itself

[@seekyunbounded9273]

Every time i think of something like month later i find out that someone was working on it for a while, for example VR was another concept

[@HelperGuy]

It must be hard to do both this mod and a full time job. Props to the creator!

[@Steveplays28]

Cool video Lunar!

[@plastered_crab]

Hey it's Steve!

[@Steveplays28]

@@plastered_crab hi Plastered Crab!

[@yeshi3522]

Hi Steve 😃

[@Steveplays28]

@@yeshi3522 Hello Yeshi!

[@cola98765]

I'm very happy that I was part of this project. It did burn me out quite a bit. but still, happy to see where it ended.

[@Distant_Horizons]

It was a pleasure working with you and I hope you're having a good time where ever you are now. - James

[@PrisonerFlake]

I was looking forward to this for months, had a gitbhub conversation boomarked and everything (I dont have an acc lol) so happy to see this in my recommended :D

[@bluvetro6524]

Thanks for the detailed and simply explained explanations. ♥ Mojang should buy these plugins... these ideas, from those who develop them, and "humbly" implement them in their Minecraft.

[@Thighmangler]

What an absolutely humble guy, insane how so much talent is being used to make our gameplay that much better and he still takes the time to praise others

[@TMG_Indi]

Imo Distant Horizons is the best Minecraft mod ever created. Thank you so much for this awesome mod. It is completely game changing.

[@fantalone666]

This is crazy good. Doubt my laptop could handle Distant Horizons on top of my shaders, but I might use it once I upgrade my setup

[@gregoryhancock6057]

Wow... I would LOVE to see this thing for Vintage Story!

[@MrMeaty6]

i cant even imagine how cool this would be with terralith

[@guilttripp349]

James seems like an incredible human being. I can't imagine working 2 full time jobs doing basically the exact same thing. What a time to come back to modding Minecraft.

[@ericpalacios920]

It would be spectacular if we could get this combination working with the Terra 1:1 (life size Earth) mod!

[@myhal-bavyt]

Finally! Iris support! I'm so so so grateful!

[@karkovb1522]

I've been slowly distancing😏 myself away from shaders recently because I find distant horizon really makes the game felt less lonely and more open. So when the new update with shader support is out then that would be the best of both worlds!

[@tom1226]

nice work

[@TheNone724]

Now we need to combine nvidium and distant horizons for some epic performance and practically limitless render distance

[@rgbok5453]

These mod developers are awesome. I hope they have a great software development career that rewards them for their hard work.

[@thegrimmtv3532]

Finally I can get back to playing Minecraft again because of this.

[@DarkEclipse86]

super underrated channel

[@joeschmoe487]

This video doesn't do justice to how awesome it actually looks in game

[@molotov6844]

Ideally, we'd be able to run this setup with the bobby mod so you could do it in multiplayer

[@douglasg14b]

Honestly just blows my mind that Minecraft doesn't have LOD chunks as a base game thing. Tiered rendering with quad trees is so common.

[@feltysky8308]

adding cubic chunk would make it perfect

[@LtChub12]

Pebble; great video 😊

[@AuraMaster_7]

Now if only it would work with the Physics mod...

[@CapitalTeeth]

It's crazy how render distance completely changes your perception of your world. That mountain that's hundreds of blocks away is something that you just can't see unless mods like distant horizons are installed.

[@Glixd]

pebble

[@sweetcapitan5690]

What is the world generation at 7:48? Is this a mod or a new pattern for the world of vanilla Minecraft?

[@spicybaguette7706]

Wow. Just the amount of dedication and time poured into this project. And we can just download it for free!

[@Desenrad]

I’m playing on realms with friends and I’m so sad my mod pack can’t get Distant Horizons because of 1.20.4. My mod pack is made to make Minecraft look really beautiful without too many over the top changes. But the lack of Distant Horizons is like losing 50% of the pack. I have grown to really appreciate DH and can’t play without it. Hope the dev gets all the help he needs to get updates pushed faster.

[@Menticid_]

i have big hopes and good feelings about all this

[@HistoryOnPaper]

This makes me want to go on a adventure so someone fetch me my walking stick and the packet of biscuits

[@Cygnus_MC]

RIGHT AWAY SIR o7

[@conely2463]

Banger

[@vitom1075]

This with a biome mod like biomes o' plenty... :O

[@SibiuLegoDaro]

More of this. I subscribed

[@el6700]

modders are amazing!

[@kristiankohout6022]

a backport for older versions of distant horizons would be amazing

[@sumbdhits]

Mojang really needs to just implement LODs already. It would make the game so much more fun to play. I thought they would've already added them 10 years ago, I've been waiting since. At least mod developers are passionate enough to work harder than the dev team, apparently.

[@Nodal488]

Quality content

[@computergamernl]

this seems really cool! Kinda hping someday soon we might get server support so i can just pregen all the LOD's or something... If i knew java i might even try implementing it myself cause i did notice it uses sql (?)

[@Dingleberry454]

I like the feeling the world only exists where I am. Call me old school lol love the old fog

[@midorifox]

Lol, this mod is great.... It's insane how both Veloren and Vintage story have this built-in.

[@hikarihitomi7706]

Nice to see my idea being put to use. But kinda sad that someone else put it out before me. :/

[@thatpumpkingirl]

As someone who plays TF2, ULTRAKILL, and Minecraft, I did NOT see TF2 coming

[@Chekalskyy]

Damn, this video casually mentions by top three games

[@thislink1519]

Distant Horizons should have a kickstarter

[@zabombolo8412]

Would love to see a version for 1.14.4 It‘s the last mc version that features single block colums biomes that many texturepacks that use biomedependant blocks use. For example cubed community! We are building a realistic north american/european city and would be cool to have that render distance to see the skyline.

[@00Cubic]

VRAM finally has a use

[@Necko1]

can i use loaded bobby chunks and use it for distant horizons? im too lazy to load the chunks back in again

[@blackstone12]

I love your videos. Keep it up!

[@seanbarnes8157]

So with the forge and fabric loader, does this mean I could run forge only mods such as create and such with the fabric only shaders such as iris with this? That would be pretty awesome if that’s the case

[@Seacat17]

FINALLY!!!

[@RomanBellic-ez5fh]

Dude behind the ruibidium and oculus project, will have some work to do. I only hope he takes the challenge, if it get to that point, that is.

[@csx5882]

I rendered the max 2048 chunks distance but it took a few hours, performance is great though!

[@SkyyySi]

9:38 "I disabled comments on curseforge" yeah that should honestly be any mod dev's step 1a lol

[@Maximillioan]

Does anyone know when it will be available for 1.20.4 ?

[@Resursator]

Just need to wait for mods to update. I'm playing Minecraft with create and vivecraft, it's stunning to see distant lands without travelling. Now I want to build a tower to see lands I'm going to later, with a comfy elevator. Also I want to build a train network to travel long distances, with some unique buildings in different biomes. Also, dh is very useful in the nether. I can't imagine playing without it now, it's imperative to have it now.

[@Haihatu]

0:35 youtube compression makes this look worse lmao im totally excited for this tho!

[@Cygnus_MC]

Sad

[@ekremhyseni9214]

For all the chunks to be shown on DH, they have to be explored/loaded first right? (i feel like this is common sense but i just wanna make sure lol)

[@Arcadiez]

this plus fsr 3.0/fluid motion you're fit to fight?

[@shhinysilver1720]

It would be absolutely epic if mojang officially supported some of these mods

[@horstcs]

Is it out yet or not? I have Iris BSL shaders on 1.20.4 fabric. Will installing the latest distant horizons 1.20.2 work well?