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There’s a ton of new content coming to Minecraft over the next year. The Spring to Life update will add more ambient features and different mob variants. A new block and mob will be added alongside some A Minecraft Movie-inspired minigames. But one of the most exciting new additions is the new vibrant visuals features, aka shaders.
“How do you upgrade the look of Minecraft without messing up 15 years of design,” Mojang says in a blog post. “We think we’ve worked it out. Our developers have been hard at work on a new graphical set of enhancements to Minecraft. We’re calling it Vibrant Visuals.”
This will provide a new “visual upgrade” for vanilla Minecraft, with the sunlight shining through the trees, pixilated shadows, and better water effects. It will be added to Bedrock devices first in the coming months and will then be made accessible in Java sometime after that.
“Vibrant Visuals brings thousands of individually crafted elements while preserving what makes Minecraft unique,” Mojang says in another, more detailed post. “Chief creative officer Jens Bergensten describes it as ‘a new look that still stays true to our creative principles’, as biomes and builds come to life with the addition of a range of graphical enhancements. But what you will notice the most is the interplay of light and shadow.”
Volumetric lighting will make the sun’s rays more noticeable across the Overworld, and will mean that every block will cast a shadow. “You’ll be able to see reflections in water and on the surface of metallic blocks, while subsurface scattering brings a gentle glow to leaves and grass,” the post continues.
The new feature will also impact mobs and items. Things that already glow, like spider eyes, will now look even more vibrant, or menacing if you’re not a fan of our eight-legged friends. It’ll also mean that places like The Deep Dark will look even better than before: “The sculk is now more emissive, more immersive, and it creates a really magical scene.”
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Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a constant rotation of shaders in Minecraft. I’ve spent hours searching for shaders that would make the leaves move, give me prettier lighting and flowers, and provide realistic water effects on places like Curseforge or Modrinth. All in an effort to make my cosy cottages and flower grottos look as idyllic as possible.
Getting shaders isn’t too tricky, but depending on how many you install, it can really suffocate your PC, causing longer loading times and a bit of stuttering, especially if you have a long field of view. Because of this, shaders were something that I had to use sparingly or a feature that some of my friends just didn’t bother with for fear of messing up their games. But Mojang’s vibrant visuals will change this for the better, making shaders more accessible.
“As a cosmetic update to the game, vibrant visuals graphics will not impact gameplay mechanics,” the blog post says. “This means that existing lighting mechanics, such as when hostile mobs may or may not burn, crop growth, daylight detectors, mob farms, and more, will all still work exactly as before. This also means that players on a Realm can all play together regardless of whether or not they are using Vibrant Visuals—as the gameplay of Minecraft remains the same.” This really is a massive win for those who haven’t been able to indulge in the beauty of shaders until now.
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Kurt Indovina
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