Lux-EA-B3 - Feature Complete?

After 92 commits since the last patch and a whopping 103 commits since the last major release, here I am yet again to officially publish the 3rd major version of the Lux shader pack.

I am making great progress towards getting lux out of its early-access phase, possibly by the release of Lux-EA-B4!
That means that Lux, when exiting the early access state, will be available for download over on CurseForge.

That is for future updates though, so let's rather take a look at what changed since the last major update.

• Star coloring
• Optimized stars
• Added an issue template for bug reports
• Added different volumetric fog types ("Legacy" & "Hybrid")
• Fixes for volumetric fog
• Tweaked ambient color
• Nicer block light falloff
• Optimized rain puddles
• Frustum culling now automatically gets disabled when "World Curvature" is enabled
• Fixed issues with NaNs on bloom
• Fixed biome detection for the nether and older minecraft versions
• Improved code formatting
• Abstracted the codebase
• Reduced ambient light strength during rainy weather
• Fixed issue #4 (NaNs on enderman-/spider eyes)
• Added manual focus
• Tweaked aurora coloring
• Added variable penumbra shadows (enabled by default)
• Tweaked color grading
• Improved AO sampling
• Tweaked water waves
• Added a funding link to the GitHub repository
• Toon depth of field
• Reduced Code Complexity
• Tweaked light color
• Tweaked water fog
• Added water absorption
• End Overhaul
• Constant exponent optimization
• Adjusted overworked minlight amount
• Fixed border fog color at night time
• Removed "dead" code
• Night lighting tweaks
• Tweaked entity damage coloring
• Fixed several VPS issues
• Tweaked auto exposure
• Fixed #8
• Improved reflection falloff
• Optimized reflection rendering
• Optimized hash functions
• Fixed issue with water color intensity setting
• Tweaked blocklight intensity
• Changed VPS handling on foliage
• Changed "phase function" on foliage
• Tweaked OldPBR unpacking
• Fixed TAA on hand when moving
• Removed unnecessary code comments
• Modified nether colors
• Fixed issue with TAA in conjunction with VPS
• Fixed issue with NaNs when water mode is set to "Tinted Vanilla"

Yeah I know. That's quite a lot of changes. (I probably even forgot some)

What's left to do now until the "official" publication on CurseForge is some small quality-of-life tweaks and perhaps small feature additions, however I think that Lux is now at a point where it has established its visual style well enough for the wider audience, which means I won't be adding major features to the shader pack until then (unless I just feel like it :P).

🥇 I also want to thank @Lolothepro again for incredible support when it comes to bug-catching

And as always: If you have suggestions or other concerns, feel free to contact me on my Discord server or open an Issue on this GitHub repository. (I also recently started getting more active on my Twitter so don't forget to miss out on that)

Lux-EA-B2-P1

I know, it's only been a day, but here we are again.
After the release yesterday, I realized that a lot of people had problems with NaNs (black spots on the screen) in various places. Because of that, I wanted to release a hot fix as soon as possible. These problems have now been resolved.
Additionally, I also tweaked the shader in other places, nothing huge, but still worth noting.

The colors now have higher contrast, and highlights are not as blinding as they used to be anymore. This allows for the use of a much greater dynamic range, which I will be using to its fullest content in the future. Another thing worth noting is color grading and a new min-light amount. Now your caves are not pure darkness anymore :P

It will probably take a while again until Build 3 is out, but I will keep using the repository frequently, so people stay updated on what's happening.

Changelog:

• Fixed problems with NaNs on various drivers
• Altered moonlight intensity
• Added new utility functions
• Refactored code
• Tweaked tone map
• Now uses proper sRGB/linear conversions
• Colored shadows now account for texture transparency
• Custom color grading System
• Added color grading
• Added missing credit headers in the shader files
• Increased min-light amount
• Other small improvements

New Major Build! - Lux-EA-B2

Well, where do I begin with this... a lot of work has been done.

Mainly in the areas of compatibility, polish and making what already is a feature, well... better. The two most important additions are Iris compatibility and M1 compatibility (needs confirmation). This makes it possible that pretty much anyone owning a desktop device can run this shader pack.

But I have to come clean. I have shown some features I was working on, that however didn't make it into this update. Most of these features were really time-consuming, which led to me not posting an update in a while... 2 months?! can you believe it?!

These features include but are not limited to:

• Albedo fallback for metal reflections
• LabPBR subsurface support
• Improved end visuals

I have also been working on some CG research (that will potentially be interesting for my future shader work) and the new website a lot, so I definitely wasn't doing nothing the entire time. For now, this is all I have.
Now just lay back and look at this absolute chonker of a changelog.

Till next time!

And as always: For bug reports or other concerns, feel free to reach out to me on my Discord server or privately (Tech#2594)

Changelog

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• Added Iris compatibility
• Added M1 compatibility (needs confirmation)
• New and fancy README
• Added support for new 1.18/1.19 blocks
• Better and organized shader settings
• Massive improvements to TAA
• Tweaked and optimized aurora borealis
• Tweaked border fog falloff
• Tweaked cloud coverage
• Tweaked cloud horizon falloff
• Removed emissive recoloring
• Tweaked & optimized atmosphere
• Tweaked star intensity
• Overhauled volumetric fog
  • Atmosphere based ("rayleigh") fog now gets applied correctly
  • Added godrays during sunset
• Overhauled ambient colors
  • New sunlight contribution curve
  • Added darkening curve
• Overhauled direct colors
  • Now using luminance sophisticated and controllable remapping
• Added global.glsl file; acting as a global include file
• Tweaked ambient occlusion strength
• Better subsurface scattering
  • Added variable subsurface offset
  • Using bias reduction
• Fixed shadows being to dark with TAA disabled
• Optimized promo outline
• Optimized rain puddles
• New dither animation
• Fixed rough reflection being too light with previous reflection reprojection enabled
• Adjusted CoC response
• Added common.glsl file; containing commonly used util functions
• Added constants.glsl file; containing commonly used mathematical constants
• Optimized lantern waving
• Added scene-dynamic wind waving
  • Accounts for lighting scenario
  • Accounts for weather scenario
  • Accounts for the time of day
• Added depth of field sample rejection
• Added proper luminance weighting to bloom
• Adjusted auto exposure
• Removed dead code
• Chromatic abberation is now using pincushion distortion
• Added adaptive chromatic abberation strength
• Tweaked tonemap exposure
• Revamped vignette effect
  • New vignette calculation
  • Added "Vignette Strength" setting
• Fixed "Rough Reflections: OFF" not working
• Added adaptive view frustum jittering
  • Now only jitters when the camera is standing still (rotation is not getting accounted for yet)
• Moon now is properly tinted by its emissive color
• Stochastic soft particles got replaced by simple alpha multiply soft particles
• Fixed depth of field & chromatic abberation not resetting to "OFF" after changing back from "Ultra" profile
• Code cleanup
• Further smaller optimizations

Fixes and small quality of life improvements!

This patch introduces some fixes and improvements over Lux-EA-B1!
Visually, little changes with this update, but this is a more stable version than Lux-EA-B1 and serves as preparation for work on Lux-EA-B2.

Thanks to @soup6020 for pointing out the redistribution of irrelevant OS files ( #3 ) and @Lolothepro for pointing out a bug ( #2 ) earlier than anyone else.
Both of those Issues have been resolved.

Quick Note: This repository is only a place for me to host and manage the project. I generally won't accept pull-requests. If you have suggestions or other concerns, feel free to contact me on my Discord server or open an Issue on this GitHub repository.

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Changelog:

• Improved horizon fade-out for clouds
• Fixed overexposing of volumetric fog
• Fixed compilation errors in the nether
• Fixed NaNs around celestials on NVIDIA cards
• Code cleanup

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First Official Lux Release!

I am pleased to announce that this release is the first official release of Lux.
A lot of work has been done, however there are still some Issues that need to be taken care of.

People on Nvidia drivers may experience NaNs. Particles currently are not being properly lit.
Finally, border fog is currently not correctly done underground and atmospherics don't properly apply behind transparents.

Apart from this, there are no known issues.
Feel free to create an issue on this GitHub if you find anything else.