Development Update – September 2024

Hey folks,

It is once again time for some updates, and I’ve made some good progress on Distant Horizons support for my packs again. Since this is kinda the only noteworthy topic again this post is a bit short and focused again like the last ones.

I’ve got most of the implementation specifics ironed out with FastPBR now, so I’ve also completed the support of it for The Nether and The End.

Getting screenspace reflections to work properly on the distant horizons terrain remains a small hurdle however, since I can’t quite figure out why the reflections just won’t render correctly, but since this is more of a minor thing that I can fix fairly easily afterwards due to the way I’ve set things up I decided to focus on everything else for now. This includes starting the integration with some of my other packs, NostalgiaVX being the next one for now.

I think the results speak for themselves, although the implementation is a bit more involved due to its more complex rendering pipeline, which may lead to the occasional odd bug or artefact, but it’s nonetheless very promising. One specifically tricky part was getting the fog, or more precisely the somewhat chunk-border hiding fog to play nicely with the distant horizons terrain, since I never made it with this sort of distance scaling in mind. I’ve actually decided to not make it blend completely into the skybox though, since the far distance terrain actually gives some nice visuals with an even stronger illusion of a larger view distance.

Previews of FastPBR and NostalgiaVX with Distant Horizons support are available for my Patreon supporters now, with FastPBR being available for all tiers and NostalgiaVX for Tier 2 and higher as usual.

As for my non-Iris exclusive packs, my approach to the distant horizons implementation should also work fairly well there thanks to me keeping it as non-invasive as possible, so those packs will also receive support further down the line among perhaps a few other smaller updates.

Last but not least I want to thank my supporters on Patreon as always as you folks just keep going with your crazy support :)

And that’s pretty much all for this time, stay tuned for quite a few updates as I bring Distant Horizons support to (hopefully) all of my packs.

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Posted in Blog, FastPBR, NostalgiaVX, Projects and tagged , , , .