Personally, I cannot live without shaders now that I have a GTX 1660Ti (laptop) and an i7-8750H. The difference between without shaders and SEUS Renewed 1.0.1 is massive:
What do you think about playing Minecraft with or without shaders? What is your preference?
This is entirely a matter of personal preference. I tried playing with shaders a few months ago, and while it was pretty, it just didn't feel like Minecraft to me. I use a heavily customized texture pack that is basically just the default textures, but brightened up quite a bit, because I think many of the default textures are way too drab.
If you like it with shaders, by all means, play with shaders.
I have never used shaders, or resource packs, other than changing a few textures myself; as far as the example you show goes, I think both look ugly because of the resource pack used, which has so little detail that at first glance I thought it was 2x2 or something.
Part of this is personal preference, also because I spent much of my time playing on a computer which probably couldn't handle shaders at all (the GPU didn't even have any shader information specified), same for why I still use 8 chunk/Normal render distance and even modified Optifine to lower the server view distance to 8 and mob (de)spawn radius to 6 to avoid MC-2536 (I spend all my time underground and in-game maps only show up to 8 chunks and generating additional terrain is just wasteful to me; even with 8 chunks a fully explored level 4 map has 26.6% more chunks generated than explored), I also prefer the look of Fast leaves (I think that seeing logs through leaves make them look ugly).
That said, I can get 1000 FPS on Fancy in TMCW's "Mega Forest" biome (massive trees up to 64 blocks tall and containing thousands of leaf blocks. You can also see what I mean by seeing logs through leaves, though in later versions of TMCW I replaced logs with exposed ends with all-bark logs so they don't look as bad, especially trees with diagonal trunks) so performance is certainly not an issue now, especially with my own optimizations - which leads to another issue as my own mods preclude the use of any other mods; I even recently completely abandoned Optifine (which doesn't support shaders for the 1.6.4 version so you'd need a separate mod) so I can directly work with the rendering engine (I regret not doing this sooner as I have to restructure a lot of code in TMCWv5, which used a lot of hacks to maintain Optifine compatibility, while at the same time not giving optimal results, including messy code, or performance, which I still consider to be extremely important, unlike Mojang or most modders) - I'd have to mod them in myself and while I have added a few features found in Optifine, such as a zoom feature (which simply lowers the FOV; this was one of the only features in Optifine I actually used, previously also to disable void fog, which I disabled myself long ago) and better grass (just using the top texture on the sides) these were very simple to implement on my own (copying code from a shaders mod would require permission unless it was open-source/free to use).
Also, I do not like the way shaders change how light renders; from what I've seen they change the tint and/or make it insanely dark; I already find Moody to be ugly because of how ineffective torches are and the way light drops off with distance (it uses a nonlinear gamma curve while Bright is more linear, giving a much more gradual change in intensity, especially from the highest few levels; while some say it lets you see in the dark I fixed that myself by making it totally black, whereas Moody is still at 5% of full brightness. There are also other issues with how things appear on Moody, such as Night Vision; I did fix these but mainly for the sake of bug-fixing; IMO, bugs like MC-43968 and MC-138211 are much more significant than anything that using shaders can do).
Personally, I have never used shaders and neither am I a very big proponent of them. So many games try to be "MMMM UBER GRAFICZ RAY-TRACING MAEKZ GUD GAME" and while some indeed look good, Minecraft stands out in the crowd for having its style of lighting system and I adore it for that. Things tend to get samey with the usual lighting systems. Plus, it's easier to make out things without ridiculous glare or shadows getting in the way.
Adding on to this, I often see it used as a crutch to help builds seem better than they really are, and that drives me positively bonkers. On top of that, my limited hardware for most of my time playing the game has kept me back, and although I could probably run one now, I choose not to. Finally, it's partly to spite that obnixious, noisy group of disgustingly self-entitled people who have super-powered computers running several grand and they complain about every game not tailoring themselves to suit those few. The overwhelming majority of people play on moderate to lower-end computers, and this is reflected in the large bases of many games that make sure they can be run on the lower end of things.
Ultimately the decision is up to the individual, but that's my 2 cents.
Like the others pointed out: this is entirely subjective.
I do love the simplistic charm of vanilla Minecraft and that's why I play without them, but when I want to get a good screenshot or video from one of my builds I often choose to do this with shaders enabled.
Personally, I cannot live without shaders now that I have a GTX 1660Ti (laptop) and an i7-8750H. The difference between without shaders and SEUS Renewed 1.0.1 is massive:
What do you think about playing Minecraft with or without shaders? What is your preference?
Preference I think, graphics aren't everything and some people are playing on computers that are simply too weak to handle advanced shaders, whether it be modded from SEUS, or the official ones planned for bedrock edition for people who have RTX video cards and after Xbox Scarlett comes out.
In an ideal world everyone would have a PC that is completely capable of handling every application you attempted to run on it without lag or slow performance. But we live in a world where economics gets in the way of that. Sure one could pick up a used or refurbished i5 or i7 PC to save money and add in a decent dedicated GPU of some sort from AMD or Nvidia, but you'd still be taking a risk as there's no guarantee used parts will work at time of arrival. I personally wouldn't trust used computers, and that's what deterred me from using it for my Minecraft server and I got an Intel NUC instead with an Intel Pentium Silver J5005 CPU, which works just fine. I'm not running any shader or texture pack mods though, so that's the reason it's not lagging in general.
As others have said, it is subjective. Shaders make for much better at a glance screenshots typically, but I find when playing with them that the lighting differences aren't always to my complete liking. Not only that, but I then have to trade off anti-aliasing and render distance, and I'd miss those much more.
As others have said, it is subjective. Shaders make for much better at a glance screenshots typically, but I find when playing with them that the lighting differences aren't always to my complete liking. Not only that, but I then have to trade off anti-aliasing and render distance, and I'd miss those much more.
Lag for me kills the gaming experience more than low quality graphics. I wasn't expecting photorealistic visuals when I got into Minecraft, and I still don't now. And as technology evolves I'd rather more focus be put into content that makes the game more fun for people, I've thought of some suggestions but I like to discuss them with others to see if others can point out a flaw with them as not all ideas are good.
and none of my machines would reliably handle the advanced shaders in Minecraft without some kind of severe performance penalty. I suspect this is the case for most gamers. But who knows? perhaps in the future there will come a time when that changes. I would like powerful computers to be in the hands of the majority, rather than the minority, and if that's not economically feasible, then perhaps the other alternative left is cloud gaming, if the general internet infrastructure would improve enough, that is. High speed internet is still expensive though.
Personally, I cannot live without shaders now that I have a GTX 1660Ti (laptop) and an i7-8750H. The difference between without shaders and SEUS Renewed 1.0.1 is massive:
What do you think about playing Minecraft with or without shaders? What is your preference?
This is entirely a matter of personal preference. I tried playing with shaders a few months ago, and while it was pretty, it just didn't feel like Minecraft to me. I use a heavily customized texture pack that is basically just the default textures, but brightened up quite a bit, because I think many of the default textures are way too drab.
If you like it with shaders, by all means, play with shaders.
I have never used shaders, or resource packs, other than changing a few textures myself; as far as the example you show goes, I think both look ugly because of the resource pack used, which has so little detail that at first glance I thought it was 2x2 or something.
Part of this is personal preference, also because I spent much of my time playing on a computer which probably couldn't handle shaders at all (the GPU didn't even have any shader information specified), same for why I still use 8 chunk/Normal render distance and even modified Optifine to lower the server view distance to 8 and mob (de)spawn radius to 6 to avoid MC-2536 (I spend all my time underground and in-game maps only show up to 8 chunks and generating additional terrain is just wasteful to me; even with 8 chunks a fully explored level 4 map has 26.6% more chunks generated than explored), I also prefer the look of Fast leaves (I think that seeing logs through leaves make them look ugly).
That said, I can get 1000 FPS on Fancy in TMCW's "Mega Forest" biome (massive trees up to 64 blocks tall and containing thousands of leaf blocks. You can also see what I mean by seeing logs through leaves, though in later versions of TMCW I replaced logs with exposed ends with all-bark logs so they don't look as bad, especially trees with diagonal trunks) so performance is certainly not an issue now, especially with my own optimizations - which leads to another issue as my own mods preclude the use of any other mods; I even recently completely abandoned Optifine (which doesn't support shaders for the 1.6.4 version so you'd need a separate mod) so I can directly work with the rendering engine (I regret not doing this sooner as I have to restructure a lot of code in TMCWv5, which used a lot of hacks to maintain Optifine compatibility, while at the same time not giving optimal results, including messy code, or performance, which I still consider to be extremely important, unlike Mojang or most modders) - I'd have to mod them in myself and while I have added a few features found in Optifine, such as a zoom feature (which simply lowers the FOV; this was one of the only features in Optifine I actually used, previously also to disable void fog, which I disabled myself long ago) and better grass (just using the top texture on the sides) these were very simple to implement on my own (copying code from a shaders mod would require permission unless it was open-source/free to use).
Also, I do not like the way shaders change how light renders; from what I've seen they change the tint and/or make it insanely dark; I already find Moody to be ugly because of how ineffective torches are and the way light drops off with distance (it uses a nonlinear gamma curve while Bright is more linear, giving a much more gradual change in intensity, especially from the highest few levels; while some say it lets you see in the dark I fixed that myself by making it totally black, whereas Moody is still at 5% of full brightness. There are also other issues with how things appear on Moody, such as Night Vision; I did fix these but mainly for the sake of bug-fixing; IMO, bugs like MC-43968 and MC-138211 are much more significant than anything that using shaders can do).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
The decision is entirely subjective.
Personally, I have never used shaders and neither am I a very big proponent of them. So many games try to be "MMMM UBER GRAFICZ RAY-TRACING MAEKZ GUD GAME" and while some indeed look good, Minecraft stands out in the crowd for having its style of lighting system and I adore it for that. Things tend to get samey with the usual lighting systems. Plus, it's easier to make out things without ridiculous glare or shadows getting in the way.
Adding on to this, I often see it used as a crutch to help builds seem better than they really are, and that drives me positively bonkers. On top of that, my limited hardware for most of my time playing the game has kept me back, and although I could probably run one now, I choose not to. Finally, it's partly to spite that obnixious, noisy group of disgustingly self-entitled people who have super-powered computers running several grand and they complain about every game not tailoring themselves to suit those few. The overwhelming majority of people play on moderate to lower-end computers, and this is reflected in the large bases of many games that make sure they can be run on the lower end of things.
Ultimately the decision is up to the individual, but that's my 2 cents.
Figured it was time for a change.
Like the others pointed out: this is entirely subjective.
I do love the simplistic charm of vanilla Minecraft and that's why I play without them, but when I want to get a good screenshot or video from one of my builds I often choose to do this with shaders enabled.
Preference I think, graphics aren't everything and some people are playing on computers that are simply too weak to handle advanced shaders, whether it be modded from SEUS, or the official ones planned for bedrock edition for people who have RTX video cards and after Xbox Scarlett comes out.
In an ideal world everyone would have a PC that is completely capable of handling every application you attempted to run on it without lag or slow performance. But we live in a world where economics gets in the way of that. Sure one could pick up a used or refurbished i5 or i7 PC to save money and add in a decent dedicated GPU of some sort from AMD or Nvidia, but you'd still be taking a risk as there's no guarantee used parts will work at time of arrival. I personally wouldn't trust used computers, and that's what deterred me from using it for my Minecraft server and I got an Intel NUC instead with an Intel Pentium Silver J5005 CPU, which works just fine. I'm not running any shader or texture pack mods though, so that's the reason it's not lagging in general.
As others have said, it is subjective. Shaders make for much better at a glance screenshots typically, but I find when playing with them that the lighting differences aren't always to my complete liking. Not only that, but I then have to trade off anti-aliasing and render distance, and I'd miss those much more.
Lag for me kills the gaming experience more than low quality graphics. I wasn't expecting photorealistic visuals when I got into Minecraft, and I still don't now. And as technology evolves I'd rather more focus be put into content that makes the game more fun for people, I've thought of some suggestions but I like to discuss them with others to see if others can point out a flaw with them as not all ideas are good.
and none of my machines would reliably handle the advanced shaders in Minecraft without some kind of severe performance penalty. I suspect this is the case for most gamers. But who knows? perhaps in the future there will come a time when that changes. I would like powerful computers to be in the hands of the majority, rather than the minority, and if that's not economically feasible, then perhaps the other alternative left is cloud gaming, if the general internet infrastructure would improve enough, that is. High speed internet is still expensive though.