Realistic Waves

Whitecap 2.0.0 — a whole new sea

Everything since 1.1.0.

Shader packs, Distant Horizons, Immersive Portals — 1.21.1 (NeoForge and Fabric)

• Shader packs (Iris). The pack draws the water with its own colour, reflections and shadows, and Whitecap moves it: the same waves, the surf's foam on the water and the wash running up the beach. Boats ride what you see. Tested with BSL, Complementary Reimagined and MakeUp UltraFast; a pack Whitecap cannot patch keeps its own water, as before.
• New options for it: Waves under shader packs, Foam under shader packs, and Wave shading under shader packs (how far the pack's reflections follow the wave's slope — lower it if wave fronts look dark).
• Distant Horizons. The far LOD sea is lit by the swell instead of lying flat past the render distance (Waves on Distant Horizons, with a range slider). With a shader pack on, the far water is the pack's.
• Immersive Portals. The sea shows through portals into the same dimension, cut cleanly at the portal, and stays out of views into other dimensions. Opening a portal no longer wipes the ocean.
• Better Cubic Chunks. The sea builds as the cubes around you arrive.
• On the other versions Whitecap still pauses while a shader pack is on.

A sea that behaves like one

• No more grid. The swell was four fixed wave trains, which repeat — from high up it showed as a lattice across the ocean. It is now a real spectrum: a long main swell, a cross swell and a short wind sea, each a fan of trains, so it never repeats and the waves come in groups.
• A sea that changes. Which waves rule — long clean swell or confused chop — differs from one stretch of sea to the next and drifts slowly over time.
• Surf in sets. A wave about every ten seconds, a few big ones and then a lull, every coast on its own timing.
• Waves run up the beach. The surf climbs the sand, sinks in and leaves it wet; further in a storm. Spray where a wave hits a wall.
• Waves only on the sea. Rivers, lakes and ponds lie calm (turn Ocean only off for worlds whose seas are not ocean biomes). Sheltered coves are calmer; posts and small ruins no longer get a ring of surf.
• A slightly taller calm sea (0.9 blocks, was 0.7) and whitecaps are optional (slider, off by default).
• New sliders: swell period, direction and spread, cross swell, wind waves, regional variety, surf interval, sets and irregularity.

A new look (both styles, including the default vanilla-texture one)

• Clear water. See through the sea to the seabed, the kelp and the fish, fading with the real depth you are looking through. The waves bend what is under them. Water clarity and Refraction sliders.
• Caustics moving across the shallow sea floor.
• The sky in the water: pale toward the horizon, sunset-coloured facing a low sun. The far sea now meets the horizon.
• Sun and moon glitter: a sparkling path toward a low sun, a moonlit one at night.
• Wave light: sunlit and shaded wave faces, light through the crests.
• A sea with moods: greener and bluer, lighter and darker stretches, glassy slicks and windy patches.
• Rain and storms on the water: rings wherever rain falls on open water, and in a thunderstorm foam streaks blown downwind.
• Ocean sounds: the open sea, a heavier sea in storms, surf where the waves break. Quiet and close, with its own volume slider.
• Every effect has its own toggle.

Faster ocean, no visible edge

• The ocean appears much faster after joining or teleporting, and far fewer patches of plain water show while you fly or sail.
• It fades out exactly where Minecraft's own fog does, and new patches fade in instead of popping.

The sea moves things

• Boats ride the waves and tilt with them. Other boats, dropped items, fishing floats and swimming mobs bob too. Breaking crests throw spray.
• Storms. Waves grow in rain (×1.4) and more in thunderstorms (×2.0); set both to 1.00 for the old calm sea. The wave-height slider goes up to 3.0.

Fixed

• Dark lines along chunk borders in a sea you had travelled across: water colour read before the neighbouring chunks had loaded.
• The ocean flickering, "reloading" and dropping FPS while chunks load. Fluids settling deep underground in fresh chunks made Whitecap rebuild the whole sea hundreds of times a minute. Block changes now rebuild only the tiles they can affect, off the render thread.
• Forge 1.20.1: "Whitecap failed to load correctly — NoSuchMethodException … Whitecap.<init>()". Loads on every Forge 47.1 and newer.
• Vanilla water under trees, piers and floating builds, with a fake ring of surf around it. The sea carries on underneath and the waves stay under the cover.
• Water inside boats. The hull stays dry, even under a tall crest.
• Waves and foam in closed-off water: a hole in a floor over the sea, a walled pool, a room over the water.
• "No waves, but laggy." If the water shader cannot load, Whitecap stops entirely and says so in chat. /whitecap status names the reason.
• Sable / Veil no longer logs a shader error on every resource reload.

NeoForge 1.21.1: install it on the server too

• The server floats its own boats on the same waves and sends its sea to every player; boats can ride the tallest storm crest without a "floating too long" kick. Players without Whitecap can still join.
• Sable ships heave, pitch and roll with the swell, with no sea drawn inside their hulls.
• Wakes (Wakes Reforged) trails and splashes lie on the swell.

Versions

• New: Fabric 1.21.11. The 26.2 files now have everything the 1.21.1 ones have (shader packs excepted).

Good to know

• Immersive Portals on NeoForge does not start with Sodium 0.8 (its own incompatibility, with or without Whitecap).
• On servers without Whitecap your boat is drawn riding the waves while the server keeps it on flat water, to stay clear of anti-cheat.
• Want Minecraft's own water back, only moving? Turn off Clear water, Sky reflection and Sun & moon glitter, and the effect toggles.
• Sounds: CC0 recordings from BigSoundBank (DenisChardonnet, Joseph Sardin) and OpenGameArt (jasinski).