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Iris: An open-source shaders mod compatible with OptiFine shaderpacks

Iris

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FAQ

Why did you make Iris?

Iris was created to fill a void that I saw in the Minecraft customization and graphical enhancement community: the lack of an open-source shaders mod that would let me load my favorite shader packs on modern versions of the game, while retaining performance and compatibility with modpacks. OptiFine, the current dominant mod for loading shader packs, has restrictive licensing that firmly stands in the way of any sort of tinkering, and is fairly notorious for having compatibility issues with the mods that I like. It's also mutually incompatible with Sodium, the best rendering optimization mod in existence by a large margin. ShadersMod was never updated past 1.12, and it lacks support for many of the many modern popular shaderpacks. So I created Iris, to try and solve these issues, and also address many other longstanding issues with shader packs.

I first and foremost develop Iris to meet my own needs of a performance-oriented shaders mod with good compatibility and potential for tinkering. Iris when paired with Sodium delivers great performance on my machine, finally making it fully possible for me to actually play with shaders instead of just periodically switching them on to take pretty screenshots, then switching them off once I get tired of frame drops. Of course, as it turns out, I'm far from the only person who benefits from the development of Iris, which is why I've decided to release it to the public as an open-source mod.

Canvas is another shaders mod that has already gained some traction. Its big downside for me, however, is the fact that it doesn't support the existing popular OptiFine shaderpacks that I want to use. This is because it uses a new format for shader packs that isn't compatible with the existing format, in order to achieve many of its goals for better mod integration with shaders. And while Canvas now has a few nice shaders like Lumi Lights, I still want to have the option of using existing shader packs that were designed for OptiFine. Shader packs just aren't interchangeable, just like how you cannot hand a copy of The Last Supper to someone who wants a copy of the Mona Lisa. They're both great pieces of art, but you absolutely cannot just swap one out for the other. That being said, if you're a fan of the shader packs available for Canvas, then great! Canvas and Iris are both perfectly fine ways to enjoy shaders with Minecraft.

Goals

These are the goals of Iris. Iris hasn't fully achieved all these goals, however we are getting close.

What's the current state of development?

Iris has public releases for 1.18.2, 1.19.2, 1.19.3, and 1.19.4 that work with the official releases of Sodium. Iris is generally usable on most shader packs, and most shader packs are being designed with Iris support in mind.

However, Iris is still not complete software. Performance can be improved, and more features are being added for shader developers. There are also some minor missing features from OptiFine that make the implementation incomplete.

How can I help?

But where's the Forge version?

Iris doesn't support Forge. This is for a few reasons:

Some users have already ported Iris to Forge, however these ports generally come with mod compatibility issues and outdated updates. The license of Iris does permit others to legally port Iris to Forge, and we are not strictly opposed to the existence of an Iris Forge port created by others. However, what we are opposed to is someone doing a bare-minimum port of Iris to Forge, releasing it to the public, and then abandoning it or poorly maintaining it while compatibility issues and bug reports accumulate. When that happens, not only does that hurt the reputation of Iris, but we also ultimately get flooded by users wanting support with a low-effort Forge port that we didn't even make.

So, if you want to distribute a Forge port of Iris, we'd prefer if you let us know. Please don't just name your port "Iris Forge," "Iris for Forge," or "Iris Forge Port" either. Be original, and don't just hijack our name, unless we've given you permission to use one of those kinds of names. If a well-qualified group of people willing to maintain a Forge port of Iris does appear, then a name like "Iris Forge" might be appropriate - otherwise, it probably isn't appropriate.

Credits

License

All code in this (Iris) repository is completely free and open source, and you are free to read, distribute, and modify the code as long as you abide by the (fairly reasonable) terms of the GNU LGPLv3 license.

glsl-transformer is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. This may affect your ability to distribute Iris.

Though it's not legally required, I'd appreciate it if you could ask before hosting your own public downloads for compiled versions of Iris. Though if you want to add the mod to a site like MCBBS, that's fine, no need to ask me.