AerixiumSFA PTGI Shaders FAQ
10 questions players actually ask, answered.
How do I enable ray-traced lighting after installing the shader?
Open your shader settings menu (usually Shift+O in-game), then locate and toggle the ray-tracing or global illumination option to ON. You may need to restart your world or reload chunks for changes to take full effect.
Why is my frame rate so low with this shader?
Ray-traced lighting is computationally expensive; reduce the ray-tracing quality or sample count in shader settings, lower your render distance, or disable reflections on less powerful hardware. Enabling fast mode or reducing shadow quality can also help.
How do I make water reflections look better?
In shader settings, increase the reflection quality or ray-tracing samples dedicated to water surfaces, and ensure reflections are enabled. Water reflections work best when your render distance is high enough to show reflected objects.
Why are caves and indoor spaces still too dark?
Increase the indirect lighting strength or bounce count in shader settings to allow more light to scatter into shadowed areas. You can also adjust the ambient color brightness to add more baseline illumination to dark spaces.
Can I use this shader with other visual mods like connected textures?
Yes, most visual mods like connected textures and custom texture packs work alongside this shader, but some mods that heavily modify rendering may conflict. Test compatibility by enabling mods one at a time.
How do I adjust lighting for different times of day?
Most shader settings automatically adapt to sunrise, noon, sunset, and night cycles, but you can manually tweak sun brightness, shadow color, and ambient light values in the settings menu to customize each time of day.
What does 'path-traced global illumination' actually do?
It simulates light bouncing realistically between surfaces—sunlight hits a block, bounces to nearby surfaces, and gradually fills shadowed areas with soft, colored light. This creates natural-looking indirect lighting without manually placing light sources.
Why do shadows look soft and blurry instead of sharp?
This shader intentionally softens shadows based on light distance and angle to look more realistic; if you prefer sharper shadows, look for shadow softness or penumbra settings in the shader menu and reduce them.
Does this shader work in multiplayer servers?
Yes, shaders are client-side only and don't affect server gameplay or other players' experiences. Everyone can use different shaders on the same server without issues.
How do I reduce lag without turning off ray-tracing completely?
Lower the ray-tracing sample count or quality preset, disable reflections on non-water blocks, reduce shadow distance, or enable temporal filtering to reuse previous frames. These tweaks preserve the shader's look while improving performance.