Aetherium

# Aetherium

**A client-side performance and video-settings mod for Minecraft 1.16.5 → 26.3 (33 versions), on Fabric.**

Aetherium replaces the vanilla *Video Settings* screen with its own animated, tabbed screen, and adds performance features that work *with* Minecraft's renderer. It targets OpenGL 3.0, so it runs on low-end PCs and on Android launchers (Pojav / gl4es) as well as desktop GPUs.

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## ✨ Video settings screen

- An animated, tabbed screen with six pages: **General, Quality, Performance, Backend, Effects, Android**

- **Dark and light themes**, smooth scrolling with a thick draggable scrollbar, and optional UI sounds

- Hover any option to get a **description popup** explaining what it does

- **Presets** and a master on/off switch

- Options a Minecraft version can't support are greyed out and marked *"not on this version"*. Nothing is hidden or faked.

## ⚡ Performance

- **Aetherium renderer** (on by default, every version): solid and cutout chunk meshes are grouped by face direction, and each chunk section draws only the faces that can point at you. It **never uses more draw calls than vanilla**, and it falls back to vanilla automatically if anything goes wrong.

- **Even frame pacing:** with a max framerate set, frames are spaced evenly instead of drifting, so the game feels smoother at the same FPS

- **Entity culling and occlusion culling:** entities you can't see are skipped

- **Smart chunk culling:** chunk sections hidden inside the distance fog are neither drawn nor meshed

- **Fast particles, fast mob models, visible-only animated textures** (on supported versions)

- **Smooth chunk loading:** chunk rebuilds and network work are spread across frames to cut stutter

- **Threaded chunk building**, with an adjustable number of worker threads

- **Adaptive render distance**, block-entity distance, entity cull distance and particle density

- **Frame-time overlay** with FPS, average frame time and **p99** (the slowest 1% of frames), plus an optional stutter log

## 🎨 Quality

- **Fog:** distance, start, clear water, clear lava

- **Sky:** sky, stars, sun and moon, cloud height

- **Particles by type:** weather, block break, combat, explosions, fire, smoke, portals, potions, drips, totem, ambient

- Weather and vignette toggles

## 🔦 Effects

- **Dynamic lights:** held items and glowing entities light up their surroundings

- **Fullbright**, with adjustable strength

- **Zoom**, with smooth animation, scroll-to-zoom, cinematic camera and third-person zoom. Zoom, Zoom In and Zoom Out are all rebindable.

- **Freelook:** look around without turning your character, in toggle or hold mode

## 📱 Android

- Built-in support for mobile launchers: renderer selection, memory budget, touch mode

- **Battery saver** with an FPS cap, and a **thermal guard** that lowers the frame cap when the phone gets hot

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## 📦 Installation

| Loader | What you need |

|---|---|

| **Fabric** | Fabric Loader only. **Fabric API is not required.** |

- Download the file that matches **your exact Minecraft version**. Each file is built for one Minecraft version only.

- **Client-side only.** Servers don't need it, and you can join any server with it.

## ⚠️ Compatibility

- Don't combine it with other renderer replacements such as **Sodium, Embeddium, Rubidium or OptiFine**. Aetherium detects them and warns you.

- If you see missing terrain faces or other rendering glitches, turn off **Video Settings → Backend → Aetherium renderer** and report the issue with your Minecraft version.

- On 1.21.5 and newer the renderer is new. Reports are very welcome!

## 🐞 Bug reports

Please open an issue on GitHub (https://github.com/entitybrian69-bit/aetherium/issues) with:

1. Minecraft version

2. Your device (PC or Android launcher, GPU)

3. The log (`logs/latest.log`) and, for crashes, the crash report

## 📜 Credits & license

- Licensed under **LGPL-3.0-only**. Source code: https://github.com/entitybrian69-bit/aetherium

- Zoom behaviour is inspired by [Zume](https://modrinth.com/mod/zume). It was reimplemented independently, with no code copied.

Aetherium is a client-side performance and video settings mod. This project is the **NeoForge** build. It needs nothing else installed: no extra library or API mod.

It replaces the vanilla Video Settings screen with its own animated screen, and adds frame-rate features that work together with the vanilla renderer.

## Features

**Aetherium terrain renderer** (on by default)

- Skips the faces of each chunk section that point away from the camera, so the GPU draws less terrain.

- Never issues more draw calls than vanilla.

- If anything goes wrong, it switches back to vanilla rendering by itself instead of crashing.

**Performance**

- Entity occlusion culling: mobs and block entities hidden behind terrain are not drawn.

- Smart chunk culling: chunk sections fully inside the distance fog are not drawn or rebuilt.

- Smooth chunk loading, worker-thread sizing and a block-entity render distance.

- Even frame pacing with a max framerate set, for steadier frame times.

- Fast particles, visible-only animated textures and fast mob models (on the Minecraft versions that support them).

**Video settings screen**

- Animated, tabbed screen: General, Quality, Performance, Backend, Effects and Android.

- Light and dark theme, a draggable scrollbar, touch scrolling and interface sounds.

- Hover over any option to see what it does.

**Extras**

- Dynamic lights from held and dropped light sources.

- Zoom with smooth animation, scroll-to-zoom and rebindable Zoom / Zoom In / Zoom Out keys.

- Freelook, plus fog, sky and per-type particle controls.

## Compatibility

- **Minecraft:** 1.20.4, 1.20.6, 1.21 to 1.21.11, 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3. Download the file for your exact Minecraft version.

- **Loader:** NeoForge.

- **Client only:** not needed on servers. You can join any server with it.

- **Graphics:** targets OpenGL 3.0, so it also runs on older GPUs and on Android launchers.

- Versions 1.21.5 and newer are marked Beta because they have had less device testing.

## Links

- Source code: https://github.com/entitybrian69-bit/aetherium

- Bug reports: https://github.com/entitybrian69-bit/aetherium/issues

Licensed under LGPL-3.0-only.