New Features

• Iris 1.8+
  • Iris 1.8 removed support for negative block IDs, which were previously used by RenderPearl
  • The update also added additional shadow programs and the ability to disable sky and star rendering, which are now used by RenderPearl to improve performance
• Light index-based lighting now enabled by default!
  • Due to significant improvements to the structure of the shader pack as well as the lighting calculations and culling, both Colored Light and Glossy Reflections are now enabled by default
• Implicit surface smoothness & improved specular map support
  • When specular maps are disabled, smoothness values are automatically generated based on surface luminocity. More customization of this feature will be available in the future
• Completely custom sky rendering
  • Significantly faster than the Vanilla Minecraft sky
  • Still slightly unstable and may not look right all the time, which is part of why this release is marked as a beta
• Hand Light option

Improvements

• Compute-based post-processing and deferred rendering
  • This significantly improves performance in many situations due to less unneccessary processing, fast shared memory and asynchronous processing
  • Translucent terrain is still forward rendered using a technique similar to that in RenderPearl v2.1, though this is subject to change
• Fog can now be disabled (requested by Baldous_)

Fixed Issues

• Enchantment glint is broken in the nether (reported by Stonease)
• Light Level Visualization is incompatible with some drivers (reported by Paragoumba)

Only supports Iris 1.7.x

Minor Fix

• Applied textureMatrix in all gbuffers-style programs to improve future and mod compatibility

Major and Minor Bug Fixes

• Fixed FXAA causing a compile failure on AMD drivers (found by Robyn_smh)
• Fixed DCG Peak Sensitivity range and changed default value to 3
• Disabled dynamic hand light when Light Level Visualization is enabled

New Features

• Minimum Peak DCG option

Other Changes

• Made manual color balance preserve luma
• Disabled emissive emerald and lapis blocks by default

New Features

• Dynamic Color Grading:
  • Uses data from multiple frames to automatically adjust exposure, color balance and black point before/during tone mapping
  • Replaces Automatic Exposure
• Held dynamic light sources
• PBR Neutral and SBDT tonemap operator support
• Specular Map support (a bit more properly this time!)
• Small utility features (can be found in Misc):
  • Light Level Visualization
  • Simple compass overlay

Experimental

• Colored Block Light:
  • Colored light with glossy BRDF-based reflections, with brightness based on Vanilla lighting
  • Uses both SSBOs and Custom Images
  • Varies significantly in performance and quality
• SMAA - Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing:
  • An alternative to the existing FXAA that preserves more sharpness and clarity
  • Currently experimental in RenderPearl due to some issues with it's implementation

Improvements

• Switched from Phong to BRDF lighting
• Improved shadow quality and performance using a fast gaussian blur approximation:
  • Can be toggled for solid and translucent shadows, or disabled to use the Linear and Off (Nearest) blur options
• Improved the skylight color calculation
• Used faster texture sampling functions where possible
• Switched to RCA Sharpening
• Made moon phase affect moonlight color
• Lava is now recognized as a fluid and has waves!
• Switched to a more accurate sRGB <-> Linear conversion
• Renamed Translucent Shadows to Subsurface Scattering, and improved its quality and performance:
  • There is now another list in block.properties containing blocks affected by SSS (which can only be of cutout type)

Removed Features

• Variable Penumbra Shadows (because it didn't work with the new shadow blur)
• Reinhard-Jodie Tonemap Curve option
• Emissive Flowers and Fungi options (as they were incompatible with the new SSS)
• Cloud lighting calculation (which didn't even work)

Other Changes

• Reverted default profile back to High
• Lowered default Volumetric Light amount
• Enabled RCA Sharpening by default
• Disabled shadow interval snapping

Fixed Issues

• Dropped items render incorrectly
• Enchantment glint animation is frozen (reported by drakray)
• Entities are treated as water in the shadow pass
• The BLOCK_EMISSION_ATTRIBUTE Iris feature is used but not marked as required
• Some post-processing effects run in the wrong order

Improvements

• Significantly improved Shadows and Volumetric Light
  • Volumetric Light is now enabled by default and has three new customization options: VL Base, Sun and Sky
  • Lighting now uses shadow samplers, allowing for smoother shadows and light rays
  • Modified Light Color
  • Shadows & Colored Shadows are now always enabled
  • Shadow Distance Culling is now 3D, improving performance
  • Added Shadow Fade option (Misc)
  • Waves now cast shadows
• Rewrote most of gbuffers, removing unnecessary calculations and alpha tests, allowing the use the GLSL Early Fragment Test instead of a custom depth test, simplifying the code, fixing shadow rendering while moving the camera and possibly improving performance
• Improved Clouds
• Made more blocks and items emissive and added a range of brightness (1-15) for emissive blocks
• Modified FXAA (no longer based on BSL)
• Optimized FXAA and Sharpening

New Features

• Added Phong lighting with Specular Reflectivity & Shininess options
• Replaced Sun Brightness with Sun & Sky Bloom options
• Added Color Format, Skip Clear and Immutable Constants optimization/misc options

Fixed issues

• Hand lighting direction is incorrect
• Block Entity rendering in The End doesn't work
• Shadows don't render on Entities

• Improved Cloud rendering using Cylindrical Fog
• Fixed Volumetric Light in The End
• Improved Shadow Bias
• Attempted to fix Sun/Moon transparency issues

• Improved and added more Tonemap Operators
  • Changed default: Reinhard-Jodie -> Uchimura
  • Expect colors and brightness to be significantly different (you can undo this by switching back to the old default)
• Added Waves on water
  • Height and Speed is customizable
• Added Bloom (disabled by default)
  • Strength and Radius is customizable
• Moved Color options to a separate menu and added Saturation slider
• Improved Sky, especially at night
• Added Shadows in The End
• Fixed Nether lighting

• Simplified Variable Penumbra Shadows, improving overall shaderpack performance by about 15%
• Changed order of Post Processing effects, removed a built-in color filter and enabled Automatic Exposure by default
• Improved Fog calculation
• Added Volumetric Light (disabled by default)
• Disabled Translucent Shadows by default
• Recalibrated Shadow Bias and fixed close up shadow artifacts
• Made more blocks emissive
• Sun is now hidden when it's raining
• Removed Emissive Map support
  • Changed default Emissive Color value: 15 -> 13
  • Changed Emissive Color value range: 10-30 -> 10-20
• Changed default Sunlight Strength value: 40 -> 30
• Improved some option descriptions

• Major changes to how Shadows and Fog work
  • Switched from deferred to forward rendering
  • Shadows now apply to transparent surfaces (even multiple layers!)
  • Improved Colored Shadows
  • Removed Shadow Blur Quality option
  • Lowered default Shadow Distance to 10 chunks
• Added Vignette & Underwater Overlay support
• Improved how Emissive Blocks & Items work internally
  • Added a lot of new emissive blocks
  • Also added Emissive Flowers and Emissive Fungi options
• Added Translucent Shadows option
  • Allows sunlight to slightly shine through thin surfaces like banners and leaves
• Significantly improved lighting in The Nether and The End
• Increased Lava Fog
• Removed Exposure option as it was causing issues with colors.
  • Colors should now be significantly more vibrant and Vanilla-like
• Added Water Transparency option
• Changed Sun Brightness range from 1-10 to 1-5 with smaller increments
• Fixed bugs:
  • Flickering when sunlight is parallel to a surface
  • Transparent hand
  • BurgessHDR Tonemap Operator causing error
  • Sharpening option causing error

• Made Skulk Catalyst emissive
• Slightly optimized Tone mapping and Fog
• Renamed Realistic Sun Path to Sun Path Rotation and made it a slider
• Added option value suffixes (requires Iris 1.6.4+)
• Improved option descriptions
• Enabled Underwater Overlay

• Improved shadows behind water and transparent blocks
• Fixed Water Fog
• Improved GUI Text/Language
• Removed Vertex Fog as it was incompatible with the latest Iris
• All Shadow-related code is now disabled in the nether and end for improved performance

• Merged Shadow Focus Distance into the Shadow Distance option
• Improved Shadow Blur and Colors
• Improved Fog
  • Better color depending on time of day
  • Terrain outside Fog now becomes transparent

• Fixed dark Fog at night
• Made Shadow Distance an option in the shader pack rather than using the Iris option
  • This allows the shader pack to know the current Shadow Distance and skip checking for shadows outside, improving performance
  • It also allows Shadow Distance to be controlled by the current Profile
• Updated GUI
  • Adds a little symbol to show approximate performance impact of each option
    • Red - High
    • Gold - Medium
    • Yellow - Low
    • Aqua - None

• Fixed Composite Scale
• Optimized Automatic Exposure

• Fixed Shadows on Water
• Changed how sunlight colors work
• Lowered default Water Fog
• Fixed Automatic Exposure
• Updated fully to GLSL 4.60
• Improved performance when both Shadows and Fog are enabled
• Improved Clouds Fog and Color

• Improved Fog and Clouds
• Added more settings for Shadows (you can now toggle different types of Shadows or even disable them entirely for a massive performance increase)
• Improved Sun and Ambient Light Colors (they now change depending the on time of day)
• Made Water more transparent

Almost the entire pack has been changed in this update, and some of the most important changes include:

• Updated to support and make use of...
  • Minecraft 1.19.4
  • Iris 1.6
  • GLSL 4.60 Core (mostly)
• Significantly improved performance
• Removed support for OptiFine
• Simplified and improved Colored Shadows to no longer depend on block.properties
• Removed Bloom because it made the pack to a lot more complex and didn't look very good
• Updated GUI
• Removed "POM" because it didn't work properly
• Removed Color Precision and Noise Texture Resolution settings as they weren't useful
• Reduced file size and count
• Improved Emissive Items
• Lots of bug fixes