HUGE thank you to davigj for this update! Check out his mods here

Bugfixes

• fixed static-y white particle flickering in caves/the underground
• balloons are no longer culled when only the balloon is in the player's view
• balloons are no longer receptive to potion effects (including instant harm)
• balloons no longer ride other entities
• balloons can no longer be named with name tags
• balloons no longer rotate after being placed

Changelog

Wind Changes

• Omnidirectional wind! Wind can now flow in the full 360 degrees
• Each layer is separated by 60-180 degrees to any layers above and below
• Each time a configurable amount of ticks passes (default 24000, one vanilla day duration), the wind changes a (configurable) percentage of 360 degrees per layer. default 2.5%
• currently this means that all wind very slowly goes in a clockwise spiral over time
• wind generates based on the world seed
• wind intensity is influenced by biome tags, altitude (which has been changed to 12 layers instead of 24), and whether or not the balloon can see the sky
  • balloons in no_wind biomes have 0 xz momentum (but do keep their y-movement)
• players move a little faster in balloons overall, especially at higher altitudes
• balloons with no litness still move according to the xz wind direction, albeit with decreased momentum

Wind Particles

• wind particles displaying is now configurable
• particles spawn a configurable distance above sea level (20 by default, so y ~= 87)
• biome dependent wind particle density--tags are breezy:less_wind, breezy:more_wind, and breezy:no_wind
  • particles generate with correspondent densities. (no_wind biomes get no particles.) biomes put in more than one tag always default to the lowest value. otherwise, it defaults to in-between
  • particle frequency in each tag is also configurable
• wind particles only appear in air blocks that can see the sky (configurable)

Interaction Tweaks

• players must no longer be passengers to light balloons, so mob passengers can be sent off. bon voyage
• players can dye balloons by r-clicking dye items (it averages with the balloon's existing color)
  • balloons are now also dyeable in the same fashion as leather armor. coloration is preserved when broken and re-placed
• each flint and steel click increases "litness" by two, not one
• rclicking flint and steel + tnt in each hand while riding a balloon causes a primed tnt entity to fall. bomb voyage
• balloon vs. basket "hitboxes"
  • flint and steel/dye must be clicked on the balloon, sand/shears/riding requires the basket
  • passengers can be interacted with/hit, projectiles go through the middle, etc

Mob Passengers

• other entities may ride hot air balloons, similarly to boats/minecarts
• passenger riding offset changed from 0.5 to 0.35 to accommodate
• mobs in hot air balloons will not burn in sun
• mobs tagged as breezy:hot_ones automatically keep balloons at a litness of 3 while riding as a passenger (unless in water/rain). includes compat with alex's mobs/caves by default
  • passengers that are on fire can also raise litness by 1 periodically (though not past 2)

Misc.

• added config option for balloons to always render, allowing them to be seen from very far away like phantoms (true by default)
• added hot air balloons to Neapolitan's chimpanzee_dart_targets entity type tag
• particles spawn with flint and steel use. while lit, they periodically emit smoke. (i would like lit balloons to have a little flame particle, but the vanilla small flame lingers a touch too long)
• balloons are very prone to lightning while aloft in thunderstorms
• updated GeckoLib dependency to 4.4.4