AuraLite

AuraLite is a modern, lightweight, and highly optimized shader pack built on top of the OpenGL 4.6 / GLSL 460 standard. It is specifically designed and exclusively tested for Minecraft 1.20.1 with Sodium + Iris (and compatible with OptiFine 1.20.1).

AuraLite delivers a breathtaking, realistic visual experience without overcomplicating the screen with bloated post-processing effects (such as aggressive motion blur, heavy bloom, or screen-space reflections), ensuring maximum FPS and smooth frametimes on modern GPUs.

What's New in v0.2.5

Version 0.2.5 is a polish & stability update that fixes long-standing rendering bugs, adds a new EXTREME quality profile with screen-space ambient occlusion, completely overhauls the cloud system for camera-stable rendering, and refines fog, aurora, and water lighting. The composite pass grew to ~1 422 lines of GLSL while keeping the same lightweight philosophy and FPS targets.

• Cloud System Overhaul — clouds no longer change appearance when rotating the camera (height-anchored world-space sampling replaces screen-space jitter). Each cloud layer (Cirrus, Altocumulus, Altostratus, Cumulus) now moves on its own rotated/sheared wind domain. New Cloud Render Distance setting (Near / Standard / Far / Very Far) scales from 3 000 m to 16 000 m with quality profiles. Camera-inside-cloud volumetric veil for immersive flythrough. Softer self-shadowing lifts crushed-black cloud undersides. Wind speed setting now also drives cloud drift.

• EXTREME Quality Profile & SSAO — a new fifth quality tier adds SSAO/SAO-style contact ambient occlusion for screen-space darkening in corners, under blocks, and around geometry intersections. SSAO Strength: Subtle / Balanced / Deep. Enabled on HIGH / ULTRA / EXTREME profiles.

• PBR Specular BRDF Fix — added the missing NdotL cosine factor for correct Cook-Torrance BRDF. Specular highlights are now properly dim at high sun angles and bright at grazing.

• Water G-Buffer & Specular Fix — gbuffers_water now outputs full G-buffer data (lightmap + PBR + normals), so the composite pass lights water correctly. Water's old Blinn-Phong specular removed — composite's GGX PBR now handles all water specular with proper Fresnel and microfacet model.

• Emissive Pixel Detection — portals and self-lit surfaces use an emissive flag so composite skips scene lighting and displays the cosmic plasma as-is.

• Sunset/Twilight Timing Fix — /time set 12800 stays red/warm instead of snapping to neutral; twilight window widened to 11 000–13 000.

• Aurora Borealis Fixes — rendering moved to gbuffers_skybasic (fixes invisibility on some pipelines); north-facing mask corrected; AURORA_MODE=1 (Only in Cold Biomes) now uses a real biome custom uniform instead of unreliable fogColor heuristics.

• Realistic Atmospheric Fog — fog density now accounts for altitude (aerosol decay), horizon path length, and indoor/outdoor exposure via skylight. Ground mist (Y ≈ 60–70) overhauled with large slow sheets, optical distance accumulation, and camera-inside-mist veil.

• Profile & UI Improvements — <profile> selector visible on the main settings screen; translation warning notice; POM disabled in ALL presets for stability; all profiles default to realistic Lambert terminator. 23 languages supported.

• Shadow Slope Bias Fix — uses raw NdotL (not light-wrapped) to prevent shadow acne artifacts.

• Dead Code Cleanup — removed unused functions and redundant render calls for faster GPU shader compilation.

  All previous features (auroras, Milky Way, procedural stars, post-rain rainbow, POM, cozy lights, wet reflections, ground mist, cosmic Nether portal, Kelvin sun/moon, Poisson disk shadows, shadow tint/distance/lift/wrap) remain fully present and are now distributed across the LOW / MED / HIGH / ULTRA / EXTREME quality profiles.

Features

Volumetric Clouds

AuraLite features a fully physical, flyable 3D cloud system driven by 12-step Raymarching in world coordinates:

• True 3D Space: Clouds float at a configurable physical altitude. You can fly up, enter a dense, foggy overcast, and rise above the clouds to see an endless rolling sea of fluffy cumulus clouds.

• Camera-Inside-Cloud Veil (v0.2.5): When flying inside the cloud layer, a soft volumetric white/grey fog surrounds the camera for immersive flythrough.

• Independent Wind-Shear Layers (v0.2.5): Each cloud layer moves on its own rotated/sheared domain with the WIND_SPEED setting, preventing upper layers from copying lower ones.

• Cloud Render Distance (v0.2.5): 4-step control (Near / Standard / Far / Very Far) — from 3 000 m to 16 000 m horizon-scale cloud decks.

• Beer's Law Self-Shadowing: Realistic light absorption makes cloud bottoms dense and dark while cloud tops glow with brilliant white/gold illumination.

• Mie Scattering: Looking towards the sun produces a glowing golden halo around the cloud edges.

• Overcast Storms: When raining (/weather rain), the fluffy cumulus clouds automatically expand, darken, and merge into an ominous, heavy Nimbostratus/Cumulonimbus storm deck. Shaders also distinguish full thunderstorms via the thunderStrength uniform, intensifying cloud darkness and wave chop accordingly.

Living Night Sky

The night sky is no longer just a static starfield — it's a fully procedural cosmos:

• Aurora Borealis: Realistic, flowing northern lights that ripple across the upper sky. Modes: Disabled / Only in Cold Biomes / Always Enabled, with independent speed and brightness controls. (v0.2.5: rendered in gbuffers_skybasic for reliability; cold-biome detection uses real biome uniforms.)

• Milky Way Nebula: A subtle diagonal brownish galactic band glows softly above the horizon, with adjustable brightness.

• Procedural Stars: Independent brightness and density sliders let you choose between a few crisp pinpricks or a brilliantly dense Hubble-style sky. Stars sparkle and twinkle in real time.

• Persistent Rainbow: After rain stops, a soft rainbow arcs across the sky and gently fades out as the wetness uniform decays. Brightness and saturation are configurable.

Kelvin Sunlight and Skies

• Tanner Helland Blackbody Sun: Sunlight color temperature is dynamically calculated in real time using a physically-correct blackbody Kelvin curve, with three selectable presets (Cool / Realistic / Warm Golden). Produces photorealistic sunrise/sunset colors (~1800K–2200K), warm golden hours (~2800K), and clean crisp white noon light (~5700K–5800K).

• Beer-Lambert Atmospheric Extinction: Sunlight intensity dynamically drops as the sun approaches the horizon due to scattering in thick atmospheric masses:

  $airMass = \frac{1}{\sin(\alpha) + 0.15 \cdot (\alpha_{deg} + 3.885)^{-1.253}}$

  This yields incredibly soft, rich, and breathtaking sunset and sunrise golden hour transitions.

• Independent Sun & Moon Intensity: 4-step master sliders let you push the day brighter (Blazing) or sink nights into total darkness (Pitch Night).

• Moon Color Temperature: choose between Icy Blue (cold), Silver (physically accurate 4100K), or Warm Cream (harvest-moon).

• Sun Halo (Mie forward-scatter) & Enhanced Sunrise/Sunset Glow: warm scattering effects on terrain when looking near the low sun.

• Extended Twilight Window (v0.2.5): Sunset/sunrise lighting stays warm/red at /time set 12800 instead of snapping to neutral.

• Crispy Circular Sun & Moon Disks: Custom procedural, perfectly round, anti-aliased sun and moon disks are drawn onto the sky dome with glowing coronas and soft halo scattering.

Lighting and Shadows

• Rotated Poisson Disk Soft Shadows: Three quality steps (Sharp / Soft / Ultra Soft) deliver natural-looking penumbra on shadow maps up to 4096×4096. Replaces the older fixed 3×3 PCF kernel.

• Shadow Distance Control: 60m / 80m / 120m / 160m caps for tuning performance or quality.

• Shadow Tint: Neutral Gray / Cool Blue (realistic) / Warm — physically-accurate cool tint under an open daytime sky.

• Ambient Lift: Dark / Standard / Lifted — controls how dark shadowed areas appear at night and in caves.

• Light Wrap / Terminator Softness: Realistic Lambert / Soft / Stylized — smooths the boundary between lit and shadowed faces. (v0.2.5: all profiles default to realistic Lambert.)

• SSAO / SAO Contact Ambient Occlusion (v0.2.5): Screen-space darkening in corners, under blocks, and around geometry intersections. Three strength levels (Subtle / Balanced / Deep). Enabled on HIGH+ profiles.

• Deep Dark Nights: Night ambient light, moonlight intensity, and fog are reduced by 2× by default to create an incredibly atmospheric, immersive, and dark night. Caves and forests are pitch dark, requiring torches for exploration.

• Warm Block Lights: Torches, lanterns, and lava emit a cozy golden-amber glow with physically accurate quadratic falloff.

• Cozy Torch Flickering: Real-time flickering animations for torches, campfires, and lanterns add a living, warm atmosphere to your shelters. Held-item light contribution (heldBlockLightValue) is also accounted for.

Fresnel Water and Moon Reflections

• Fresnel Effect: Water reflectivity is mathematically calculated based on your viewing angle. Looking straight down provides crystal transparency, while looking towards the horizon transitions water into a highly reflective, glossy sheet reflecting the sky dome.

• Silver Moonlight Path: Moonlight specular reflection on water ripples has been increased by 4.5×. At midnight, a brilliant silver lunar reflection path shimmers across the waving ocean.

• Unified GGX PBR Water Specular (v0.2.5): Water's old Blinn-Phong specular replaced by composite's GGX microfacet model with proper Fresnel — physically consistent with terrain PBR.

• 3D Geometric Waves: Vertex shader waves physically displace the water mesh in real-time, and react to rainStrength / thunderStrength for choppier seas during storms.

• Independent Ripple & Specular Controls: WATER_RIFFLES (Calm / Standard / Choppy) and WATER_SPECULAR_STRENGTH (Soft / Standard / Glinting) can be tuned separately for the perfect water mood.

• Zero Feedback Glitches: Designed to be extremely stable, utilizing no feedback-loop depth buffer reads to guarantee bug-free solid rendering on all GPUs.

Dynamic Weather Surfaces

• Wet Reflections: During rain, solid blocks like grass, dirt, and stone darken and become glossy, picking up sky reflections under open weather. Disables itself automatically under roofs.

• Low Ground Mist (Y ≈ 60–70): Soft fog sheets drift across water and ice surfaces at dawn and dusk. (v0.2.5: uses large slow sheets + small breakup noise with optical distance accumulation for natural radiation fog. Humidity from rain/wetness makes the mist persist longer. Camera-inside-mist veil when standing in the fog layer.)

Foliage Animations

• Waving animations for oak/spruce/birch leaves, tall grass, flowers, vines, lily pads, and crops.

• Gently animated using hardware-optimized sine waves and time constants.

• Ice Fix: ice / packed ice / blue ice / frosted ice are tagged with a dedicated block ID (10005) to disable waving and refraction, eliminating long-standing visual glitches.

LabPBR Support and POM

• 3D Normal Maps: Real-time TBN (Tangent-Binormal-Normal) matrices generate true three-dimensional depth on blocks (stone crevices, brick joints) reacting dynamically to light angles.

• Specular Reflection (GGX Microfacet): Polished surfaces give sharp glossy glints, while metallic surfaces (gold, copper, iron) tint the specular reflection with the block's native albedo. (v0.2.5: correct NdotL cosine factor for Cook-Torrance BRDF accuracy.)

• Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM): True per-pixel block relief that pops out of the surface. Configurable POM_DEPTH (1–3) and POM_STEPS (1–4). Disabled by default in all profiles for stability; can be enabled manually. Recommended to keep off on incompatible resource packs.

• Seamless Fallback: Falls back automatically to gorgeous flat vanilla textures if no PBR resource pack is active.

Cosmic Nether Portal

The vanilla Nether portal texture is procedurally transformed into a swirling 3D plasma vortex — animated purple/magenta cosmic energy that pulses with hypnotic depth. Mapped via dedicated block ID 10006 in block.properties. (v0.2.5: portal pixels flagged as emissive — composite skips scene lighting and displays the plasma as-is.)

Realistic Atmospheric Fog (v0.2.5)

• Fog density accounts for altitude (aerosol concentration decays with height), horizon path length, and indoor/outdoor exposure via skylight.

• Consistent Beer-Lambert distance fog with height-weighted density — no delayed fog walls.

Post-Processing

• Multiple Tone Mapping Curves: Pick from Soft, Filmic (ACES), or Intense (High Contrast) to match your preferred mood. Industry-standard color grading prevents overexposure on bright blocks (sand, snow) while retaining rich shadow details.

• Color Vibrancy: 4-step non-linear saturation control (Muted / Balanced / Colorful / Vivid) that makes foliage glow emerald and skies look lush, without crushing skin tones.

• Exposure Brightness: Muted / Balanced / Vibrant — global brightness lift.

• Subtle Vignette: Gentle lens-darkening at screen edges for improved depth and immersion.

Cloud Altitudes

AuraLite's sky is meteorologically modeled after the international cloud classification system:

Altitude (m)
16 000 ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─  ↑ Cumulonimbus (Cb)
12 000 ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─│
10 000   Ci  ─ Cirrus              │ Vertical
 8 000   Cc  ─ Cirrocumulus         │ Development
 6 000 ─ ─ Cs ─ Cirrostratus ─ ─ ─ ─│─ High Clouds
 5 000   Ac  ─ Altocumulus          │
 4 000   As  ─ Altostratus          │
 2 000 ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─│─ Mid Clouds
 1 500   Sc  ─ Stratocumulus        │
 1 000   St  ─ Stratus              │
 500     Ns  ─ Nimbostratus         │─ Low Clouds
   0 ─ ─ Cu ─ Cumulus ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─│

AuraLite smoothly transitions these layers based on in-game weather conditions (clearing, rain, or storms).

Optimizations

AuraLite is built from the ground up for maximum FPS using OpenGL 4.6 native hardware operations:

• Hardware FMA: All wave and waving foliage math is compiled into native single-cycle hardware operations (fma), reducing GPU execution cycles.

• Bitwise Noise: Replacing slow transcendental float functions (fract(sin(dot(...)))) with ultra-fast Integer Bitwise PCG-style hashes utilizing floatBitsToUint and uintBitsToFloat.

• Early-Ray Termination: Volumetric raymarching terminates instantly once cloud transmittance falls below 2%, saving rendering power.

• No Hand Glitches: Handheld items, particles, and mobs are rendered in a separate stable path without tangent matrix overhead, eliminating "translucent hand" bugs.

• Dead Code Elimination (v0.2.3–v0.2.5): Removed unused noise/fbm functions, dead cloud raymarching code, and redundant render calls to reduce GPU shader compilation time.

• Profile-Based Scaling: Every feature (POM, Auroras, SSAO, Cozy Lights, Wet Reflections, Ground Mist, Shadow Distance, Cloud Distance, Sun Halo, etc.) is intelligently distributed across the LOW / MED / HIGH / ULTRA / EXTREME profiles so low-end systems don't pay for effects they can't afford.

Installation

1. Download AuraLite_ShaderPack.zip from the Versions section on Modrinth or from the Releases section on GitHub.

2. Open your Minecraft directory (e.g. %appdata%/.minecraft on Windows).

3. Place the downloaded .zip file inside the shaderpacks folder (Do not unzip it!).

4. Launch Minecraft 1.20.1 using a profile with Sodium + Iris or OptiFine installed.

5. In-game, go to Options → Video Settings → Shader Packs, select AuraLite, and click Apply.

Configurations

AuraLite includes a fully translated in-game configuration menu in 23 languages (Arabic, Czech, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese Simplified & Traditional).

⚠️ Some localization strings may be inaccurate. If something looks strange, compare with the English original.

• [Lighting Settings]

  • Dynamic Shadows: Toggle sun/moon shadows.
  • Shadow Resolution: [1024 / 2048 / 4096]
  • Shadow Softness: [Sharp / Soft / Ultra Soft] — rotated Poisson disk filtering.
  • Shadow Distance: [Near 60m / Standard 80m / Far 120m / Ultra 160m]
  • Shadow Tint: [Neutral Gray / Cool Blue / Warm]
  • Shadow Lift / Ambient: [Dark / Standard / Lifted]
  • Light Wrap: [Realistic Lambert / Soft / Stylized]
  • Torch Warmth: [Cozy / Warm / Intense] — Customize block light warmth.
  • Torch Flickering: Toggle real-time torch / campfire / lantern flicker.
  • PBR Lighting: Toggle PBR specular reflections and normal mapping.
  • 3D Block Relief (POM): Enable Parallax Occlusion Mapping (LabPBR resource pack required).
  • PBR Intensity: [Subtle / Standard / Mirror]
  • SSAO / SAO Occlusion (v0.2.5): Screen-space ambient occlusion for contact shadows.
  • SSAO Strength (v0.2.5): [Subtle / Balanced / Deep]

• [Sun & Moon]

  • Sun Intensity: [Dim / Standard / Bright / Blazing]
  • Sun Color Temperature: [Cool / Realistic (Tanner Helland) / Warm Golden]
  • Sun Halo (Mie Scatter): Toggle warm forward-scatter halo on terrain.
  • Enhanced Sunrise/Sunset Glow: Toggle stronger warm back-scatter at low sun angles.
  • Moon Intensity: [Pitch Night / Standard / Bright Moon / Full Night]
  • Moon Color Temperature: [Icy Blue / Silver 4100K / Warm Cream]

• [Foliage Settings]

  • Waving Leaves: Toggle leaves animation.
  • Waving Foliage: Toggle grass, flowers, and crops animation.
  • Wind Speed: [Gentle / Breeze / Gale]

• [Water Settings]

  • Water Waves: Toggle 3D vertex water waves.
  • Water Density: [Clear / Balanced / Deep] — Adjust water transparency.
  • Water Ripple Strength: [Calm / Standard / Choppy]
  • Water Specular Glow: [Soft / Standard / Glinting]

• [Sky & Clouds]

  • Volumetric 3D Clouds: Toggle raymarched clouds.
  • Cloud Altitude: [Low (~110m) / Standard (~160m) / High (~240m)]
  • Cloud Thickness: [Thin (Cirrus) / Standard (Cumulus) / Dense (Stormy)]
  • Cloud Render Distance (v0.2.5): [Near / Standard / Far / Very Far]
  • Aurora Borealis: [Disabled / Only in Cold Biomes / Always Enabled]
  • Aurora Speed: [Slow / Standard / Fast]
  • Aurora Brightness: [Soft / Standard / Glowing]
  • Milky Way Brightness: [Dim / Standard / Bright]
  • Stars Brightness: [Faint / Standard / Brilliant]
  • Stars Density: [Few / Standard / Dense]
  • Rainbow Intensity: [Subtle / Balanced / Vivid]

• [Post-Processing & Fog]

  • Fog Density: [Low / Medium / High] — Adjust horizon mist.
  • Low Ground Mist: Toggle realistic dawn/evening radiation fog at Y ≈ 60–70.
  • Exposure Brightness: [Muted / Balanced / Vibrant]
  • Color Vibrancy: [Muted / Balanced / Colorful / Vivid]
  • Image Contrast: [Soft / Filmic ACES / Intense] — Tone mapping curve.
  • Vignette: Toggle cinematic corner darkening.
  • Rain Wetness Reflections (hidden): Wet glossy ground during rain (on by default in MED+).

Quality Profiles

License

• AuraLite is open-source and licensed under the MIT License.

• Officially Supported Platform: Minecraft 1.20.1 with Sodium + Iris or OptiFine loader.

• Note: Other Minecraft versions are not officially tested at this stage.