Zarya v1.0 — Changelog

The first full release of Zarya — a performance-focused shaderpack designed to deliver modern visuals while maintaining high FPS, even on low-end GPUs.

The main goal of this version is simple: better Minecraft visuals without turning your game into a slideshow.

⚡ Performance

• Completely optimized the rendering pipeline for low-end GPUs.

• Reduced the G-buffer footprint to 16 bytes per pixel.

• Main rendering uses only 2 fullscreen passes.

• Heavy effects are rendered at 1/4 resolution where possible.

• Optimized texture and depth sampling.

• Removed expensive effects with poor visual-to-performance ratios.

• Added four performance presets:

  • Potato — maximum FPS.
  • Fast — high performance.
  • Balanced — recommended default.
  • Beautiful — maximum visual quality.

🌤️ Lighting & Atmosphere

• Added procedural sky rendering.
• Added atmospheric color changes based on the sun's position.
• Added procedural stars.
• Added morning and evening atmospheric haze.
• Improved atmospheric light scattering.
• Added volumetric-looking lighting without expensive full ray marching.
• Improved overall scene illumination.

☁️ Clouds

• Added dynamic clouds.
• Added cloud shadows.
• Implemented lightweight cloud rendering instead of expensive volumetric ray marching.
• Added a fast cloud mode for better performance.

🌊 Water

• Added animated water waves.
• Added underwater caustics.
• Added light absorption underwater.
• Added analytical sky reflections without expensive SSR.
• Improved underwater lighting and atmosphere.

🌑 Shadows

• Added dynamic shadow mapping.
• Added soft shadow edges.
• Added hardware PCF filtering.
• Added cloud shadows.
• Optimized shadow distance and shadow-map resolution.
• Added multiple shadow-quality options for performance tuning.

🌿 Materials

Added dedicated rendering for major material types:

• Grass
• Foliage
• Water
• Glass
• Metal
• Standard blocks
• Entities
• Armor and emissive materials

Foliage also receives additional light transmission to make vegetation look more natural and less flat.

🌫️ Fog

• Added analytical fog rendering.
• Removed the need for expensive volumetric ray marching.
• Improved scene depth through atmospheric haze.
• Integrated fog directly into the lighting pipeline.

✨ Post-Processing

• Added Bloom.
• Added color correction.
• Added tone mapping.
• Implemented FXAA instead of TAA to reduce VRAM usage and rendering cost.
• Optimized the final post-processing stage.

🔥 The Nether & The End

• Added dedicated rendering behavior for different dimensions.
• Added custom fog and lighting parameters.
• Kept the lightweight rendering architecture for stable FPS.
• Adapted atmospheric and emissive effects to each dimension.

⚙️ Settings

Added extensive performance controls for:

• Shadow quality and distance
• Shadow-map resolution
• SSAO
• Shadow softness
• Cloud quality
• Light shafts
• Bloom
• Water waves
• Atmospheric effects
• Color settings

Most effects can be individually disabled or reduced to fine-tune performance.

🚫 Intentionally Not Included

Zarya v1.0 is not designed to compete with heavy cinematic shaderpacks by simply adding more effects.

The following features are intentionally excluded:

• SSR geometry reflections
• TAA
• POM / Parallax
• LabPBR / full PBR support
• Heavy volumetric clouds
• Full volumetric ray marching

This is intentional: every effect needs to justify its performance cost.

🎯 Version Overview

Zarya v1.0 establishes the foundation of the shaderpack: optimized rendering, procedural skies, dynamic shadows, water, clouds, atmospheric fog, and modern post-processing — all while keeping GPU usage under control.

Designed primarily for players with low-end and budget GPUs who want a significant visual upgrade without sacrificing playability.

Zarya v1.0 — Less unnecessary effects. More FPS. More atmosphere.