Distant Horizons for VulkanMod

v2.4.0-3.0.0+vm.2 - NVIDIA weather effects, SSAO smoothing, and rendering fixes

Hotfix — weather effects (rain, snow, particles) now render correctly in front of LODs on all GPUs. Fast clouds no longer render on top of LODs. Previously, the Phase 2 composite was overwriting weather pixels with LOD colors on NVIDIA and potentially other non-MoltenVK drivers.

• SSAO smoothing — enabled the bilateral Gaussian blur on SSAO output. Previously the blur was disabled (radius 0), causing visibly grainy/noisy ambient occlusion.
• Z-fighting fix (NONE mode) — added small depth bias to LOD depth output in NONE fade mode, preventing z-fighting at the MC/LOD overlap boundary.
• High-altitude LOD gap fix — LOD clip distance now uses 3D distance instead of XZ-only. Previously, flying high and looking down created a visible gap between MC terrain and LODs because the cylindrical XZ clip didn't match MC's spherical render distance.

v2.4.0-3.0.0+vm.2 - NVIDIA weather effects, SSAO smoothing, and rendering fixes

Hotfix — weather effects (rain, snow, particles) now render correctly in front of LODs on all GPUs. Fast clouds no longer render on top of LODs. Previously, the Phase 2 composite was overwriting weather pixels with LOD colors on NVIDIA and potentially other non-MoltenVK drivers.

• SSAO smoothing — enabled the bilateral Gaussian blur on SSAO output. Previously the blur was disabled (radius 0), causing visibly grainy/noisy ambient occlusion.
• Z-fighting fix (NONE mode) — added small depth bias to LOD depth output in NONE fade mode, preventing z-fighting at the MC/LOD overlap boundary.
• High-altitude LOD gap fix — LOD clip distance now uses 3D distance instead of XZ-only. Previously, flying high and looking down created a visible gap between MC terrain and LODs because the cylindrical XZ clip didn't match MC's spherical render distance.

Clouds, weather, and DH 3.0 support. Clouds now render correctly behind and in front of LOD terrain. Weather effects (rain, snow) are no longer hidden behind LODs. Compatible with both DH 2.4.x and 3.0.x (nightly) from a single jar.

What's New

• Cloud rendering — clouds now render with correct depth against LOD terrain (on 1.21.11). Supports fast and fancy cloud modes.
• Weather fixed — rain, snow, and particles no longer render behind LODs. The rendering pipeline has been reordered so weather effects always appear in front of terrain as expected.
• DH 3.0 support — now works with both Distant Horizons 2.4.x and 3.0.x (nightly).
• Smoother camera movement — camera velocity now dynamically adjusts overdraw to prevent LOD pop-in when moving fast, matching base DH behavior.

Known Issues

• Cloud rendering is only available on VulkanMod 0.6+ (MC 1.21.11). VM 0.4.2 uses MC's default cloud rendering.
• Rare LOD flicker when detail level changes during fast camera movement.

Technical Details

• Custom Vulkan cloud renderer builds cloud geometry as VBO meshes and renders them with MC's projection matrix for accurate depth testing against LOD terrain.
• uModelOffset now uses Vulkan push constants on VM 0.6.1+ instead of per-draw UBO re-uploads, reducing CPU-side overhead.
• LOD compositing and post-processing (SSAO, fog) moved to deferredComposite to execute before MC's weather pass.
• In NONE fade mode, clouds render before the LOD composite so LODs draw on top (no depth buffer available for comparison).
• Added DhFrameProfiler — lightweight per-frame timing for all rendering phases (disabled by default, zero overhead when off).

Clouds, weather, and DH 3.0 support. Clouds now render correctly behind and in front of LOD terrain. Weather effects (rain, snow) are no longer hidden behind LODs. Compatible with both DH 2.4.x and 3.0.x (nightly) from a single jar.

What's New

• Cloud rendering — clouds now render with correct depth against LOD terrain (on 1.21.11). Supports fast and fancy cloud modes.
• Weather fixed — rain, snow, and particles no longer render behind LODs. The rendering pipeline has been reordered so weather effects always appear in front of terrain as expected.
• DH 3.0 support — now works with both Distant Horizons 2.4.x and 3.0.x (nightly).
• Smoother camera movement — camera velocity now dynamically adjusts overdraw to prevent LOD pop-in when moving fast, matching base DH behavior.

Known Issues

• Cloud rendering is only available on VulkanMod 0.6+ (MC 1.21.11). VM 0.4.2 uses MC's default cloud rendering.
• Rare LOD flicker when detail level changes during fast camera movement.

Technical Details

• Custom Vulkan cloud renderer builds cloud geometry as VBO meshes and renders them with MC's projection matrix for accurate depth testing against LOD terrain.
• uModelOffset now uses Vulkan push constants on VM 0.6.1+ instead of per-draw UBO re-uploads, reducing CPU-side overhead.
• LOD compositing and post-processing (SSAO, fog) moved to deferredComposite to execute before MC's weather pass.
• In NONE fade mode, clouds render before the LOD composite so LODs draw on top (no depth buffer available for comparison).
• Added DhFrameProfiler — lightweight per-frame timing for all rendering phases (disabled by default, zero overhead when off).

Major VRAM fix — GPU memory now properly cleans up during gameplay. Previously, VRAM would grow indefinitely (easily reaching 7GB+) as you explored or left and rejoined servers. With this fix, VRAM stays stable under normal use and reliably frees up between server sessions. Additionally, rendering at extreme altitudes and high render distances is now more stable, and SSAO performance is improved at long distances.

Known Issues

• Rare LOD flicker: individual LOD sections may briefly disappear for a frame when their detail level changes (e.g. flying fast towards terrain). Will be further improved in future releases.

Memory Management (Technical Details)

• Fixed primary VRAM leak: VBO destruction (destroyAsync/close) now schedules cached GPU VertexBuffers for deferred freeing via a thread-safe pending queue. Previously, GPU buffers remained cached permanently — growing proportionally to total LOD churn.
• GPU buffer frees use an N+1 frame delay with compare-and-remove to prevent LOD transition flicker and identity hash collisions after GC.
• Fixed static Vulkan resource leak — depthOnlyView and mcDepthCopyImage were never freed during cleanup.
• Fixed VRAM leak in DhDepthReaderPipeline — cleanup and resize were completely unimplemented, leaking resources on every server join/leave cycle.
• Fixed native memory leak in DhCompositePipeline — four MappedBuffers were never freed during cleanup.
• Fixed stale resize callbacks — pipeline resize handlers now guard against firing after cleanup, preventing use-after-free across reinit cycles.
• Added depthReaderPipeline to the cleanup chain.
• Added vkDeviceWaitIdle at start of cleanup to ensure GPU is idle before freeing resources.
• Pre-allocated index buffer to 256K quads (~6MB) to avoid mid-frame grow+defer cycles.

Rendering

• Switched terrain, SSAO, and fog rendering to use DH's projection matrix instead of MC's, preventing rendering artifacts and NaN propagation at extreme altitudes.
• Added depth remapping in the composite shader for correct occlusion against Minecraft terrain.
• SSAO now fades out beyond 1,600 blocks — the occlusion shader early-outs for distant fragments, improving performance at high render distances.