Sonic Ether released “Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders” on March 12. The latest edition of the mod, which can be found here, must be paired with the latest version of the GLSL Shaders Mod for Minecraft v 1.7.2 (here).
Once you install both mods properly, the most beautiful and dynamic Minecraft images you have ever seen await you…
According to Sonic Ether’s forums, these are some of the most notable features of the mod:
- Puddles will form after rain. These puddles will disappear after a few minutes of sunshine.
- Completely overhauled clouds and reflections
- The sun will now dim when partially blocked by these new clouds
- Torches produce a mellow, white-balanced light
- Completely new water surfaces
- Tons of lighting effect changes
Sonic Ether is waiting for the newest Nvidia drivers to make the release official. There is a possibility that these drivers may interfere with the cloud changes.
The forums indicate a number of bugs still being worked out, but most of them were able to be solved through forum interaction. This is only the latest version of a pretty long-standing mod, but every new mod update will have some bugs.
Ether suggests using his forums to report bugs and offer change advice. One common problem that players are having is not being able to see very well due to the lighting changes, but that seems to be the point. Ether seems to believe that traditional Minecraft torches gave off an unrealistic amount of light. The reduction of sunlight on cloudy days seems to make sense, but users on the forums aren’t thrilled with this idea. There are also some reflection issues, which is pretty typical of all Minecraft mods.
Most of the graphic issues can be fixed by tweaking your Nvidia graphics settings (disabling Anisotropic Filtering, insuring that Minecraft is running on your Nvidia GPU, etc). A few users have also mentioned that the mod doesn’t work properly on Macs.
Be advised that the mod is pretty labor-intensive, so old computers may have difficulty running it.