mobium-perf

Mobium

Faster chests, signs, item frames and other things that stand still: Mobium draws them from the GPU instead of rebuilding them every frame.

Mobium is a client-side performance mod for Minecraft (Fabric, Quilt and NeoForge). Vanilla, Iris and Entity Model Features still decide how everything looks: Mobium changes how geometry reaches the GPU, never what ends up on screen.

Beta. This is the first public version. If anything looks different with Mobium than without it, please report it (see Support), ideally with a screenshot taken with Mobium on and one with it off (A/B key, below).

✨ Features

Static cache

Objects that do not change are captured once, the first frame they are seen, through the game's own rendering code (so resource packs and other mods' changes are captured as well). From the next frame on, Mobium draws them from GPU buffers, and the game skips building, posing and writing their vertices every frame. As soon as something changes, the object is captured again.

Everything else, including mobs, takes the normal vanilla path. Objects that are being broken (the cracks), the farthest objects once the GPU memory budget is full, and anything Mobium does not recognise are drawn by the game as usual.

What it gains: in a test room with 1,000 chests and 300 signs (Sodium, 1920×1080, Intel Arc 140V laptop GPU), the frame time dropped from 3.3 ms to 1.7 ms, about twice the frame rate. In a normal base the gain depends on how many chests, signs, item frames and displays are on screen; an empty field gets neither faster nor slower.

Coming later

• GPU part transform: animated mobs keep their normal animations (including Entity Model Features and Fresh Animations), but the GPU builds their vertices instead of the CPU.
• Animation LOD (optional, off by default): far-away mobs reuse last frame's pose.
• Banners, bells, conduits and lecterns, which animate every frame, will use the GPU part transform. Armor on armor stands is drawn by the game for now.

📖 Usage

Mobium works out of the box; the static cache is on by default.

• Settings: the config button in Mod Menu (Fabric) or the mods list (NeoForge), or Mobium's page in Sodium's video settings. Every cached type has its own switch, and the GPU memory budget (default 128 MB) can be changed.
• A/B key: switches all of Mobium off and on live, so you can compare in the same spot. It is the key right of <kbd>P</kbd>: <kbd>]</kbd> on a US keyboard, <kbd>+</kbd> on a German one (rebind it in the controls).
• F3: the debug entries mobium:modules (what is on, and why something is off) and mobium:timings (where the frame time goes) can be enabled in the debug options.

If something goes wrong inside Mobium, it switches the affected part off for the rest of the session, shows one message and lets the game draw everything as usual.

🧩 Compatibility

Known issue (not caused by Mobium): on NeoForge, Iris 1.11.7 crashes with Complementary Reimagined r5.9.3, also without Mobium.

The full list, with what was tested how, is in docs/compat.md.

❓ FAQ

Do I need to install Mobium on the server?

No. Mobium is client-side only and works in singleplayer and on any server.

Does Mobium change how things look?

It must not. Scripted test scenes compare Mobium's picture pixel by pixel with the game's own, on Fabric and NeoForge (on Fabric also with a shader pack and with Fresh Animations). If you see a difference, press the A/B key to check whether it goes away with Mobium off, and please report it.

Does it help with lots of mobs?

Not yet. Mobs are what the GPU part transform (next version) is for.

📦 Installation

Download the file for your loader from Modrinth or CurseForge, put it in your mods folder and add the required dependencies. Mobium 0.1 is for Minecraft 26.3.

💬 Support

If you need help with any of my mods, join my Discord server, or open an issue on GitHub.

License

Mobium is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0.