Photon Shaders

Community

• Join my discord server for questions, suggestions and development updates
• You can also donate if you would like to say thanks

Frequently asked questions

1. "When will Photon be released for new Minecraft version?"

• Shader packs are generally not very dependent on MC versions; as long as Iris is available, Photon should just work.

Features

• Fully revamped sky, lighting and water
• Detailed clouds with several layers and many different cloud types
• Immersive weather system providing different skies each day
• Voxel-based colored lighting (enabled with Ultra profile, requires Iris)
• Screen-space reflections
• Volumetric fog
• Soft shadows with variable-size penumbras
• Detailed ambient occlusion (GTAO)
• Camera effects: bloom, depth of field, motion blur
• Much improved image quality with TAA, FXAA and CAS
• Advanced temporal upscaling (disabled by default) for low end devices
• Extensive settings menu allowing you to customize every aspect of the shader
• Full labPBR resource pack support

Compatibility

Shader loaders

• Iris (recommended)
• Iris is a modern shader loader with far better performance, mod compatibility and developer features than OptiFine
• Some features (Colored Lighting) will only work on Iris
• OptiFine

GPU vendors

• Nvidia
• AMD
• Intel
• NOT compatible with Apple GPUs (Metal)

Mods

• Voxy
• Distant Horizons

Showcase videos

Acknowledgments

• Settings menu translations:
• NakiriRuri and OrzMiku (Chinese)
• Jmayk (Italian)
• Timtaran (Russian)
• Emin - Shadow bias method from Complementary Reimagined (fully fixes peter panning and light leaking underground!)
• DrDesten - Depth tolerance calculation for SSR (helps to prevent false reflections)
• Jessie - f0 and f82 values for labPBR hardcoded metals
• Sledgehammer Games - Bloom downsampling method used in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (described here)
• momentsingraphics.de/ - Blue noise texture
• NASA Scientific Visualization Studio - Galaxy image
• Glaasman1 - for being a cool guy