Hey folks,
It’s time to go through some new stuff again and as usual there are some especially interesting things, most notably further progress on Kappa Shader v5.0 as well as an improved auto-exposure solution.
Kappa Shader
I have made some further improvements to the new cloud system for version 5.0. This specifically includes even more cloud shape variety within each layer as well as some subtle refinements of the maths behind it. In addition to that I am also considering a third layer of volumetric clouds, which could prove useful for certain high-altitude clouds that are different to get right as planar clouds. Speaking of which, I am also planning to give the planar clouds an overhaul once the volumetric clouds are somewhat done, as I came up with some interesting ideas when making the skybox for Soft Voxels.
Another fairly major addition is local exposure, which should solve the auto exposure issues with the huge dynamic range of Kappa Shader’s lighting once and for all without requiring ugly hacks or messing up the ratio between different lights. What it does is essentially adapting the exposure per screen region rather than uniformly across the screen, which allows it to expose the image more ideally in high-contrast scenes (eg. looking outdoors from an indoor area or terrain and sky during sunset). This should also make the pack more gameplay friendly as a whole, as it improves the visibility in many difficult scenes that may occur during normal gameplay. Obviously this feature will also make its way into other packs once it’s mature enough.
KappaPT
As some of you may have already read in the update post for version P15, KappaPT has reached its preliminary feature-complete milestone with the addition of raytraced refractions, at least regarding what is reasonable with OptiFine in its current state as there will inevitably be major additions and changes once I can switch to a more flexible and modern shaderpack-pipeline. The latter depends on the development progress of the alternative shadersmod counterparts, most notably Iris and Focal Engine. Until either of those proves to be a viable new home for my packs KappaPT will mostly just get maintenance updates aside from keeping up with the updates that the regular Kappa Shader receives (which will still be plenty, as you can see with the upcoming weather update).
NostalgiaVX
There haven’t been any huge additions to this pack lately, as I have in a way announced in the last post but it has still received some interesting changes, most notably a bunch of new block mappings which includes stuff like stairs and such. I have also fixed a bunch of lighting issues with noncubic voxels as well as the adaptive accumulation being broken. This should still give you a nice quality of life improvement when using the pack and the potential addition of TAAU should also help mitigating the annoying performance issues caused by OptiFine (or specifically the block texture atlas sampling) with this pack.
Screenshot made by L4mbads
Soft Voxels
This project has received a large number of changes again, as you might have already expected. This includes proper reflections (though only on water for now), improved indirect lighting behaviour as well as volumetric fog, which gives you the very pleasing LPV contribution that you might already know from NostalgiaVX.
You can find the changelog for version P3 here: Link
Next up would be rough reflections, which will then also include resourcepack reflections before I start giving the pack a minor internal overhaul, as there are still various internal placeholders that are no longer needed, or can be done in a different and more proper way.
Needless to say that this project will arguably one of the most interesting ones to follow for the time being :p
Map: Survivalgames 2
Contest Winners
There has been another screenshot contest on my discord server. These are the winners:
Place 3: TheFinkie
Closing Words
As NostalgiaVX and KappaPT are now both in a fairly complete and solid state I’m focusing more on version 5.0 of Kappa Shader as well as the UShader rewrite, since both of these have been on my to-do list for a long time by now. Once these two are done I will most likely be able to finally work on some other new ideas I had in mind, which should be especially exciting for those among you who like well-performing shaderpacks, but I won’t say too much about that for now as I don’t want to spoil the surprise(s?).
As usual it’s also time for another huge thanks to my supporters on Patreon, as you folks just keep going like in the last few months. I don’t really know what else to say besides that I’m just extremely grateful for that and I’ll try to keep making more awesome things that you’ll enjoy and you haven’t seen like this before :)
And thats it for this time, I hope you’ll enjoy the upcoming updates.
