To be perfectly honest, I didn't think this thing was going to work. However, I've seen 'Distant Horizons' touted as one of the best survival-friendly render distance mods out there... but I honestly didn't expect it would live up to the hype. However, I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed. (It's rare that a mod thoroughly impresses me. Usually it's more like, 'Oh cool, it does exactly what I'd expect, that's neat,' but this one really does go above and beyond.)
...Enough so that I wanted to make a proper thread about. Distant Horizons: Is it worth it? Obviously I've already come to a conclusion on the matter, but by personal observations are as follows:
CONS
-The most obvious disclaimer to get out from the start is that Distant Horizons does not actually increase your render distance- instead, it generates lower-detail copies of chunks, which decrease in resolution the further away they are from you. If you look closely, (with the Optifine Zoom, or a Spyglass), it's easy to tell where the 'fake' chunks begin and the real ones end.
-The Mod also takes a fairly long time to get running- once you teleport into a new area, or load into a world, it can take about three minutes for all of the fake chunks to finish loading at the standard distance. Once you're in the world, (as long as you're not using elytra-rockets), they seem to update much more consistently. (Just walking or running around, for example, I didn't have any issues.) During the initial loading period, however, it can look a bit strange, especially if you load in at high altitudes.
-To the best of my knowledge, this doesn't work with shaders. (Or at least, it doesn't work with Complementary Shaders or Makeup Shaders, which are the only two I actually tried.) However, it looks nice enough once everything's working properly that I'm kind of disinclined to mess with it.
PROS
-Again, most obvious things first; by default, Distant Horizons allows you to have the equivalent of a 64 chunk render distance, without any hit to FPS. throughout, my FPS never fell below 20, and hovered around the 30-50 range, when I wasn't flying or actively loading into an area for the first time. The settings can be turned up much, much higher, but I personally find the default distance to look the best.
-Fake Chunks... actually look kind of nice, enough so that I could imagine this system in Vanilla Minecraft. The system of decreasing detail with distance works quite well, and transitions between different detail levels were smooth and barely noticeable. The Chunks also seem to accurately depict the areas they're modeled on, including player-made and naturally generated structures.
-The Mod does work with resource packs, as far as I can tell. (I'm using the Stay-True resource pack, along with Optifine 1.18.2 in these screenshots, and as you can see, the orange pallete for the birch forests is accurately loaded.) I'm honestly not sure how this works, but it works quite well. As far as I can tell, it's also Client-Side, and has multiplayer functionality.
-------------
If you want to try Distant Horizons, it's available on Curseforge, (Linked here), for versions 1.16, 1.17, and 1.18. (I recommend keeping the default render distance, but increasing fog density to around five for the best visuals.)
(As you can see with the screenshots, the mod creates some visual glitches when initially loading, and has a distinct border between real and fake chunks it one looks closely- however, once everything is fully loaded, it is quite consistent, and has minimal impact on FPS. All of these images were taken with a Render Distance of 10, on a relatively dinky computer.
...Also, most of these images were taken directly above my surprisingly productive mob farm, and my FPS still didn't take a hit. This makes my mountain outpost way cooler...
To be perfectly honest, I didn't think this thing was going to work. However, I've seen 'Distant Horizons' touted as one of the best survival-friendly render distance mods out there... but I honestly didn't expect it would live up to the hype. However, I have to say, I'm thoroughly impressed. (It's rare that a mod thoroughly impresses me. Usually it's more like, 'Oh cool, it does exactly what I'd expect, that's neat,' but this one really does go above and beyond.)
...Enough so that I wanted to make a proper thread about. Distant Horizons: Is it worth it? Obviously I've already come to a conclusion on the matter, but by personal observations are as follows:
CONS
-The most obvious disclaimer to get out from the start is that Distant Horizons does not actually increase your render distance- instead, it generates lower-detail copies of chunks, which decrease in resolution the further away they are from you. If you look closely, (with the Optifine Zoom, or a Spyglass), it's easy to tell where the 'fake' chunks begin and the real ones end.
-The Mod also takes a fairly long time to get running- once you teleport into a new area, or load into a world, it can take about three minutes for all of the fake chunks to finish loading at the standard distance. Once you're in the world, (as long as you're not using elytra-rockets), they seem to update much more consistently. (Just walking or running around, for example, I didn't have any issues.) During the initial loading period, however, it can look a bit strange, especially if you load in at high altitudes.
-To the best of my knowledge, this doesn't work with shaders. (Or at least, it doesn't work with Complementary Shaders or Makeup Shaders, which are the only two I actually tried.) However, it looks nice enough once everything's working properly that I'm kind of disinclined to mess with it.
PROS
-Again, most obvious things first; by default, Distant Horizons allows you to have the equivalent of a 64 chunk render distance, without any hit to FPS. throughout, my FPS never fell below 20, and hovered around the 30-50 range, when I wasn't flying or actively loading into an area for the first time. The settings can be turned up much, much higher, but I personally find the default distance to look the best.
-Fake Chunks... actually look kind of nice, enough so that I could imagine this system in Vanilla Minecraft. The system of decreasing detail with distance works quite well, and transitions between different detail levels were smooth and barely noticeable. The Chunks also seem to accurately depict the areas they're modeled on, including player-made and naturally generated structures.
-The Mod does work with resource packs, as far as I can tell. (I'm using the Stay-True resource pack, along with Optifine 1.18.2 in these screenshots, and as you can see, the orange pallete for the birch forests is accurately loaded.) I'm honestly not sure how this works, but it works quite well. As far as I can tell, it's also Client-Side, and has multiplayer functionality.
-------------
If you want to try Distant Horizons, it's available on Curseforge, (Linked here), for versions 1.16, 1.17, and 1.18. (I recommend keeping the default render distance, but increasing fog density to around five for the best visuals.)
(As you can see with the screenshots, the mod creates some visual glitches when initially loading, and has a distinct border between real and fake chunks it one looks closely- however, once everything is fully loaded, it is quite consistent, and has minimal impact on FPS. All of these images were taken with a Render Distance of 10, on a relatively dinky computer.
Cooking with Mindthemoods ~ Biomes ~ Archeology
---
~ My Portfolio ~ Skindex ~ Test ~ Discs ~
...Also, most of these images were taken directly above my surprisingly productive mob farm, and my FPS still didn't take a hit. This makes my mountain outpost way cooler...
Cooking with Mindthemoods ~ Biomes ~ Archeology
---
~ My Portfolio ~ Skindex ~ Test ~ Discs ~
That's one of the best mods I have ever seen! Thanks for creating it!
Hey! I'm Kiko, one of the admins of: https://www.kikonutinomods.com/