Making Leaves, Plants, and Saplings Look Right with POM

Understand what changes

Optimum Realism gives leaves, saplings, flowers (Allium, Azure Bluet, Blue Orchid), and crops real depth via POM and cutout alpha. Leaves become volumetric-looking clusters instead of flat cards, and flowers get raised petals. This only reads correctly if your shader supports parallax on cutout/foliage geometry — many shaders apply POM only to solid blocks by default.

Adjust the shader for foliage

In your shader options, find the section covering foliage, cutout, or alpha-tested blocks. Enable parallax there if it is a separate toggle. If leaves look like they are floating or have hard black edges, reduce Parallax Depth and enable 'Parallax Shadow' or 'Self Shadow' if available. Increasing the shadow samples helps the leaf clusters read as solid rather than transparent.

Test in a real biome

Plant an Acacia Sapling, a Birch Sapling, and place Allium and Azure Bluet in a row. Walk around them slowly — the petals and stems should shift against the ground. If they flicker, your shader's parallax is sampling too aggressively; lower the depth value. If leaves look like solid cubes, the shader is not applying parallax to cutout geometry at all, and you should switch shaders rather than change the pack.