Icarus Shaders: May 2025 Updates (Early Access)

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.

• These are possibly also listed on the bottom of this post as Attachments.

• 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 mob atlas' you can use this resource pack to override what mobs look like in reflections

  • '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:

2025-5-23:

• less blocky Global Illumination even on Lower raytracing settings

  • it's optional, video about it here: https://youtu.be/xjjQvAtIE6U?si=kE_hOZ0_-lbh-Bb_

• sunset colors removed from underground cave fog

• little bug fixes

• menu improvements

• All old configs will be broken on this, -I'm sorry. this is a one time only problem. The processing I'm doing on the shader minifies stuff and i set it to not break again going forward, but it breaks this one time.

  • in good news the processing shows me every tool-tip i missed, so i will try to get them filled in soon as well

  • faster compile times probably coming soon as well

2025-5-18:

• changes:

  • per pixel ray tracing amounts

    • (hopefully) faster water and mirrors, if not i did a typo and i'll fix monday

    • later certain things will accumulate faster to not ever look noisy or low quality, even when first on screen, -that part isn't done yet but the groundwork is ready

  • Light Upscaling / Denoising: (the system that runs lighting at a dynamically lower resolution to gain fps and fps stability, and upscales and denoises the lighting to still look pretty good. ( I get gains of 2x to 4x depending on the ray tracing settings, -more for heavier loads))

    • lots of internal progress on the denoising and upscaling

    • Debug Mode in it's menu for tuning the quality, since the 'FPS Goal' option is currently too aggressive with the dynamic scaling

    • selective denoising options (like just on mobs and plants or on terrain too but not on water) This is especially handy if still running the lighting full res

    • there is an option to make the ghosting on hand-held stuff suck in a different way, -the fix i tried here isn't great. i think i'm going to have to do motion vectors just for them or per voxel lighting

    • water and shiny pbr materials can look excellent with denoising set to full 'minimum quality' now. it is more pbr-aware & can be turned off for them completely. this way it's all benefits and no drawbacks

    • water still looks blurry & smeary with low 'minimum quality' in 'Light Upscaling & denoising', but it's a little better. to fix that i need to just do a seperate high res pass when everything else is running very low res

  • Ghosting:

    • TA is now seperate for clouds, lighting, and the scene as a whole. there are sliders to adjust this, but i need to put them all in one place

    • Total Scene TA is reduced greatly when using the denoising, since the lighting & clouds are now accumulated seperately.

    • Total Scene TA can now be reduced to 0.0 on Low settings or when denoising, to have 0 ghosting without RT, and minimal that isn't denoiser based

  • Menu Cleanup:

    • more stuff given tooltips, names & organization

  • Related:

    • i duct taped together a text parser for shaders that is able to process a shader in entirety. right now it's a low quality minifier, but it might help me debug stuff and might help to port to aperture later once it has more features

2025-5-12:

• Denoising & Upscaling

  • improvements that can now work even if 'Minimum Quality' is set to .03, which is over 1,000x upscaling. I'm not sure if it will work if actually stuck that low for long, but it looks pretty passable in my testing when doing very low amounts of raytracing that approach that dynamically -seen here: https://youtu.be/2OPvaroeXxs?siP8rlvx3TqgJNIy it does not look as good as native rendering, but I am really impressed with it getting 120 fps on a medium render setting. I still need to fix water & mirrors with it

  • It is not turned on by default. You have to turn it on. In 'Quick Performance' it will be the green menu. And the top option set to advanced. There are some tooltips. This is still very alpha so it isn't on defaults yet.

2025-5-10:

• Denoising & Upscaling

• Added Dynamic Scaling for Raytracing, for faster fps that are more stable, as seen in this video: https://youtu.be/QUPbo0ERTa8 it is on by default when using denoising & upscaling, but can be turned off, or you can just set the 'minimum quality' to what you want

• Lots of improvements to the denoising and upscaling, -it's almost fully useable but water looks like crap with it on, for now, -it's still a work in progress

• In 'Quick Performance', it is the menu with green text. Read the tooltips, but probably just set the mode to 'advanced' and set the 'fps goal' to something reasonable and set your game frame limit higher and it should just work

• I'm trying to fix it for water, and improve image quality and how PBR materials look with it. -the denoising does come at a quality loss for some things, but it can double fps, and fixes noise on waving plants & mobs.

2025-5-5: (as shown in Video)

• denoising & upscaling for lighting - massive fps gains, but still in progress -it will get better

  • not on by default yet, you can watch the video to see how to turn it on and known improvements needed

• sky changes (you can revert by changing sky style to 'Icarus', default is now 'Pegasus')

• water rendering improvements

• probably a few small bugs