SemiRealistic Shader

A shader pack that changes only the sky and the water. Terrain, entities and lighting stay vanilla: there are no shadows, no bloom over the whole scene and no colour grading. If you like the vanilla look but want a beautiful sky, this is for you.

Features

Sky

• Procedural sky based on vanilla sky and fog colours, so biome fog and distant terrain blend in without a visible seam
• Sun with a soft glow and larger disk at sunrise and sunset, with a warm horizon band
• Moon with proper phases, craters and a soft halo
• Optional stars at night

Clouds

• Realistic volumetric clouds with soft lit tops, shaded undersides and bright silver edges when facing the sun
• Clouds drift with the wind and stay fixed in the world, so they shift as you move
• Thicker and darker in rain
• Coverage, speed, height and thickness are adjustable

Sun light effects

• God rays through gaps in clouds, trees and mountains, stronger at low sun
• Sun glow and lens flare (anamorphic streak and ghosts) that fade when the sun is blocked
• Faint moon rays at night

Water

• Procedural waves with several layers of detail
• Reflections of the sky, clouds, sun and moon
• Fresnel reflections: stronger at grazing angles
• Sun and moon glitter on the waves
• Reflections turn off in caves and under roofs

Compatibility

• OptiFine and Iris
• Minecraft 1.16.5 – 26.3
• Works in the Overworld. Nether and End are left vanilla.
• Vanilla clouds are disabled, because the shader draws its own.

Settings

Quality profiles (Low / Medium / High / Ultra) plus sliders for sun and moon size, sky saturation, cloud settings, wave strength, reflection strength, ray quality and flare strength. Clouds are the most demanding part, so if your FPS drops, switch to a lower profile.