Icarus Shaders (Early Access) -June 2025 Updates

Developed for iris, tested in minecraft 1.20.1 (and 1.21.4) If you get bugs in other mc versions let me know!

Version Numbers: 

• version numbers are the date I made them, the newest is usually the best. (It's Year-month-day format)

• for example 'Icarus v 2025 -3-29' is the version of the shader I uploaded on March 29th 2025

Extra Attachments:

• Inside of the shader.zip file is a folder called 'Extras' which has Extra stuff in it that you can use for extra features, including config files and resource packs.

• they are:

  • 'Icarus feature fixes v2' is a resource pack that fixes the color of the '3D grass shader', it might need to be loaded on top. Don't use it if not using the 3D Grass shader or grass dirt will look green.

    • Icarus feature fixes v2 is replaced by separate resource packs in newer versions, named as what they are for

  • 'icarus mob atlas' you can use this resource pack to override what mobs look like in reflections, make your own!

  • 'icarus LUT-nuetral' you can edit this to make your own color grading. the supported format is 'hald 4096x4096', which substance designer also uses. (this video shows how to make your own LUT resource pack (use the timestamps). You can also find the LUT.png files or convert formats for free online)

Modpack / Test Environment: 

• this is my main test environment: https://modrinth.com/modpack/timetravelbeards-1.20.1-modpack

• I also test newer mc versions in the 'Fabulously Optimized' modpack

Versions Changelog:

2025-6-27:

• A lot of progress on redoing the Volumetrics (sky, fog and water) but nothing really finished about it, so the last version might actually look better, idk. changes should mostly only be noticeable on the preset: 'smoke physics test' and when using 'immersive' volumetrics in cloud settings

  • testing: smoke & fog physics in a limited range with other cloud styles that are better fps

  • new ways of storing and combining data to blend fog into the scene better & denoise it better

  • testing: smoke from explosions

  • known problems:

    • immersive volumetrics might be off until i finish reworking it

    • banding in fog, especially over water

    • noise / ghosting / denoising

• 'Extras'

  • seperate resource packs now for 3d grass, and smoke physics

    • 'smoke physics resource pack' hides non-physics smoke & is a test for detecting explosion particles

2025-6-14:

• Fixed Presets

  • 'Render' presets should no longer have any 'Vanilla+' lighting, just traced

• Cave Caustics

  • added another variant

• Menus

  • added a few missing tooltips / options

2025-6-13:

• Cave Caustics

  • all light sources make light bounce off of water now, not just the Sun, basically free, defaulted On on all non-'classic' presets

  • menu for it added in 'Nature & Atmosphere/Water/Caustics/Water Glints/Cave Caustics'

  • more patterns coming soon, i'm not the biggest fan of the current look

• Immersive Fog

  • 'Smoke/Mist Physics Test' preset updated to use high detail mist

  • work on redoing all the way that renders, so 'Immersive' volumetrics may be a bit buggy until i finish working on it, but they are only used fot this preset & maybe the 'Icarus' preset

• Temporal Accumulation

  • seperated for clouds / fog vs lighting, etc

  • rebalanced defaults

  • still need to finish combining all the old stuff like lightning handling into the new stuff

• Far lights

  • Screen space colored lights now work for things out of voxel range at an adjustable, brighter brightness (but I need to tune how it decides what color to use it's a bit buggy)

• Fog blur

  • Is disabled for now and being added to DOF logic

2025-6-7:

Underwater:

• Now you can see clouds looking up from underwater on all presets

• Improved refraction handling

• Slightly improved take on vanilla water-fog colors by adding water's color absorption to it

• Unloaded chunks should no longer show up as holes through water-fog when underwater

• Removed artifacts on water surface when looking out

Denoising:

• Improved

• Defaulted On on all presets

• Selective Denoising defaulted On on all presets: this makes water reflections crispier and more responsive, but when running the Lighting at lower resolution it can be a little noisey or ghosty until I finish the other method for water

• TA re-balanced with Total Scene TA

• Added Upsampling routines

• Fixed night time problem that also showed in other situations as pixelated clumps, color banding, and permanent TA

• Reduced warbling effect the denoising causes, still working on eliminating it perfectly

Mobs / Plants / Entities:

• Defaulted Denoising On so they won't look noisy anymore

• Defaulted Full Lighting On, instead of a lesser quality trace and depending heavily on floodfill

• Removed light boost on mobs since they have that full lighting now

• Hand held items default to not try to reproject, I'll add motion vectors later

Screen Space Double-Check for ray tracing:

• Improved, and torches no longer reflect as full blocks when it's on

• Defaulted On

Presets:

• All presets reworked to include Denoising (it can still be turned off)

• New presets: ‘Dynamic’. To test the denoising -with dynamic raytracing quality & upscaling, -and not remove the other main ones yet in case these suck

• Dynamic (Low): basically render low with dynamic ray trace scaling & upscaling.

• Dynamic (Medium): basically the default hybrid medium with dynamic ray trace scaling & upscaling

• Dynamic (Very High): something akin to Ultra but with dynamic ray trace scaling & upscaling. I am getting 75fps with this, and these settings would be lucky to hit 20fps wiithout the DRS (Dynamic Raytrace Scaling). This includes water caustic reflections up off of water and metals

• high render presets should run better, I removed the ridiculously high ray tracing since the denoising rounds them out.

• Ultra should run better, it is only doing like double the raytracing now instead of like 4x or more, since the denoising can carry more weight.

• Dynamic ultra is ultra with dynamic ray trace scaling. I can probably make it 2x faster and look the same

General:

• Menu work

• Parser work

• Water surface should no longer disappear with immersive volumetrics

• Algae & silt defaulted on for immersive volumetrics

Still working on:

• Better handling of water and mirrors when lighting quality is set to low res

• Better TA systems integration for better denoising with all that on

• Removing the last bit of warbling the DRS introduces, especially at lower lighting resolution

Hoping to do soon:

• Redo the high detail fog physics and fog rendering so I can default all that fancy stuff on

• Restore physics effects for sand and snow