Optimize Performance While Keeping Visual Quality

Identify Performance Bottlenecks

Load a demanding area (dense forest, large city, or complex terrain) and check your frame rate. Open the shader options and note which settings have the biggest visual impact: typically shadow distance, reflection quality, and ray-tracing distance.

Reduce Expensive Settings Strategically

Start with these adjustments in order of performance impact:

1. Lower shadow distance first—this removes distant shadows without affecting nearby lighting.

2. Reduce reflection resolution or disable reflections on distant blocks.

3. Decrease ray-tracing samples if available—fewer bounces = faster rendering.

4. Limit ambient occlusion distance to closer surfaces only.

Test and Balance

After each change, spend a few minutes in-game to confirm frame rate improvement. Move between lit and dark areas, look at water, and check shadows. The goal is finding the lowest setting that still looks noticeably better than vanilla. You may discover that reducing just shadow distance by one tier gives you 20+ extra frames with minimal visual loss. Keep visual tweaks (like glow intensity) at higher values since they cost less performance than geometric calculations.