Shader of Stars

Shader of Stars v1.6.6 — Major Visual, Water, Atmosphere & iGPU FPS Update!

A massive upgrade over v1.4 bringing a brand-new Reimagined visual style, a complete artifact-free water overhaul, sculpted 3D clouds, Gamma Utils support, and even faster integrated-GPU performance:

✨ New Visual Styles & Atmosphere

• 3 Complete Visual Identities (Astral Fantasy, Natural & Reimagined):
  • Reimagined (Minecraft+): Complementary-inspired 3D block contrast, fluffy rounded-bevel blocky clouds, texture-reflective pixel water, radiant 3D Minecraft Nether portals, 16×16 pixel-locked shadows, and a Square Sun & 8-Phase Square Moon!
  • Distinct Natural Mode: Crisp physical daylight and realistic starry night sky (no auroras).
  • 8-Phase Lunar Cycle: Authentic Minecraft moon phases across both spherical and square moons.
• Sculpted 3D Volumetric Clouds: Restored rich 3D sunlit rim depth across Photon Cumulus, Multi-Layer, and Reimagined Blocky clouds with compact, localized core shadows (never heavy charcoal bellies, never flat) — plus selectable v1.0 & v1.6 cloud backups in Settings.
• Seamless Render-Distance Edge Fog: Smoothly blends distant chunk borders into the horizon sky across the Overworld, Nether, and The End.
• Vibrant Post-Rain Double ✨s: Full 42° primary + faint 51° secondary ✨s linger naturally as storms clear and blend cleanly across distant mist.

🌊 Complete Water & Portal Overhaul

• 4-Scale 2D FFT Parallax Ocean (Astral & Natural): 16-bit RGBA16 normals + 256×256 Inverse-FFT ocean wave spectrum with view-ray wave parallax and liquid caustics — zero normal banding, zero chunk seams, and clean waterlogged foliage (v1.0 & v1.5 water styles kept as 1-click backups!).
• Texture-Reflective Pixel Water (Reimagined): Real 3D pixel-bevel reflections extracted directly from Minecraft's animated water texture.
• Radiant 3D Minecraft Nether Portal (Reimagined): 8-slice volumetric parallax tunnel through Minecraft's portal texture with glowing magenta-gold spiral veins (while keeping Astral Swirling Vortex in Astral & Natural and the 3D Cosmic End Portal intact).

🛠️ Compatibility, Lighting Fixes & iGPU Optimization

• Native Gamma Utils & Fullbright Support: Works seamlessly with Gamma Utils (G Max Gamma up to 1500% and H Night Vision), Resource Gamma Util, and vanilla Night Vision across caves, nights, Nether, End, and underwater without blowing out daytime skies.
• Clean Held & Dropped Item Lighting: Fixed first-person held items and dropped items looking overly dark outdoors, under trees/porches, or when facing away from the sun.
• Faster iGPU Performance:
  • >51% fewer noisetex lookups in Reimagined 3D clouds via zero-weight bevel skipping.
  • Zero sky-pixel water G-buffer DRAM reads + zero-blocklight ALU fast-skip on >95% of outdoor pixels.
  • Precomputed shadow rays for canopy & underwater god rays and zero held-item SSAO/shadow taps.