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Shaders and performance

The short version

Section titled “The short version”

None of this is required. The plain Indigo pack plays fine. If you want the game to run faster and look better, install one of the two Indigo Looks packs instead of adding mods by hand. They are the required pack plus a tested set of client-only mods; the server never sees them, and you play alongside everyone else exactly as before.

Pack Adds For
Indigo Looks Sodium, Iris, Complementary Reimagined shaders, Entity Culling, FerriteCore any gaming PC from the last six years or so
Indigo Looks + Distant Horizons the above plus Distant Horizons for terrain far past normal render distance a mid-range or better GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and patience while it builds its far terrain

Download from the main site: Indigo Looks or Indigo Looks + Distant Horizons. The Setup page offers the first one; this page is the only place the second is linked, on purpose.

Installing

Section titled “Installing”

Treat it as a second instance, so the plain pack stays untouched:

  1. Download the pack above.
  2. Prism Launcher: Add Instance → Import → Browse and pick the file, or paste its link. Prism installs 1.21.1, NeoForge and every mod, then writes the shader setting.
  3. Edit Instance → Settings → Memory: 6144 MB. Shaders need the headroom.
  4. Launch. The shader is on by default. Add the server the same way as always.

You can keep both instances and switch depending on the machine you are on.

In game

Section titled “In game”
  • K turns the shader on and off. O opens the shader screen.
  • Complementary ships a High profile and that is what was tested. On a weaker GPU open O and pick Medium or Low; or play with the shader off, where Indigo Looks is simply the normal pack, about twice as fast.
  • With the shader on, Create’s kinetic blocks render through the slower vanilla path. Big Create factories run better with the shader off, or with the Iris & Oculus Flywheel Compat mod added by hand; it was tested and works but is not in the pack.

Distant Horizons

Section titled “Distant Horizons”

Distant Horizons draws simplified terrain beyond your render distance. It learns that terrain from what your client has seen, so the far view fills in as you explore and is empty in places you have never been. The server does not run it and does not send it anything extra.

  • It uses roughly 1 GB more RAM and keeps every CPU core busy for the first minutes in a new area.
  • The shader, not Distant Horizons, is still what limits frame rate at 1080p.
  • To turn it off without removing it: Mods → Distant Horizons → Config → Rendering → Enable Rendering. To remove it: untick its jar in Edit Instance → Mods.

What was measured

Section titled “What was measured”

On an RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, render distance 16: the plain pack ran at about 123 fps, Indigo Looks with the shader off at about 222 fps, and with the shader on at about 80 fps average with 1% lows around 52 fps. The Distant Horizons tier joined the live server with online mode and the whitelist enforced, voice chat connected, and zero errors.

Why not just grab Sodium and Iris yourself

Section titled “Why not just grab Sodium and Iris yourself”

You can, but the versions matter more than usual here. Create needs a Sodium from the 0.6 line or newer, and the only Iris for 1.21.1 that works with the current Sodium is a beta build. The last Iris release for 1.21.1 will not load against it. The Looks packs pin the combination that was tested; if you do it by hand, use the exact versions listed in the pack.

Learn more

Section titled “Learn more”