Allow anonymous analytics?

Our cookieless analytics show us which features get used and store nothing on your device. We never sell your data or use it for advertising.

Privacy choices

Choose what ModDex may collect. You can change this anytime from Privacy choices in the footer.

Read the full privacy policy

Strictly necessary Required for the site to work: login sessions, security tokens, and abuse prevention. Always on and cannot be disabled. Always on
Analytics Cookieless analytics through PostHog's EU servers, used only to see which features get used. Nothing is stored on your device, and the anonymous visitor ID resets every day. Needs your consent because usage data goes to a third party. Never used for advertising or profiling. Off by default in the EU and UK.

ShadowLOD

Quick rating

Community listing page, reviews may not be monitored by the author.

How listings work Are you the author?

ShadowLOD

By Hardek

No reviews yet

More FPS, with or without shaders, without altering how your game looks.

Mod Loaders
Minecraft
Shockbyte server hosting: 35% off your first server with code MODDEX35 (opens in a new tab)

About

Description

ShadowLOD : Lighter, smoother worlds

More FPS, with or without shaders, without changing how your game looks.
Crafted by Hardek

Minecraft 1.20.1 Forge 47+ Embeddium and Oculus

GitHub · CurseForge

About

ShadowLOD makes Minecraft lighter and smoother to render, with or without shaders. Distant mobs turn into flat pictures of their own model, far block entities and particles are skipped, chunk loading no longer causes stutter, and with shaders on, shadows are only drawn where you can see them. Your world looks the same, your graphics card just does less work.

Features

  • Smart shadows : objects only go into the shadow map when their shadow can land somewhere you can see.
  • Shadow cache : the terrain shadow is kept and reused until something changes, and updates are spread over several frames to avoid stutter.
  • Distant mob LOD : beyond 32 blocks, mobs are drawn as flat pictures of their real model, up to 128 blocks.
  • Render distances : adjustable limits for block entities, particles and translucent sorting.
  • Smooth frames : chunk loading is spread over frames and slowed down right after a lag spike.
  • Auto tuning : when the frame rate drops below your target, some distances go down a little on their own.
  • Thread priorities : the render thread comes first, world generation and Distant Horizons work in the background.
  • Any shader pack : packs that need a safer setup are detected automatically.

Results

Same spot, same settings, frame rate set to Unlimited. Only the mod is turned off (left) or on (right).

Scene Off On Gain
🧱 Wall on a flat world 150 FPS 260 FPS ×1.73
🏘️ Village house 44 FPS 147 FPS ×3.34
🏰 Village with a tower 58 FPS 157 FPS ×2.71
🛒 Market with villagers 75 FPS 90 FPS ×1.20
🌙 Village at night 154 FPS 186 FPS ×1.21
🐄 Pen with 130 cows, far away 12 FPS 236 FPS ×19.7

Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Radeon RX 9070 XT, 1440p, Photon shaders, Distant Horizons. Your results depend on the scene and your hardware.

Village house, off and on

Village with a tower, off and on

Pen with 130 cows, off and on

Wall on a flat world, off and on

Market with villagers, off and on

Village at night, off and on

Compatibility

Mod Status
Embeddium ✅
Oculus (all shader packs) ✅
Distant Horizons ✅
C2ME ✅ ³
Entity Model Features / Fresh Animations ✅
Entity Culling ✅ ¹
ImmediatelyFast, ModernFix, FerriteCore ✅
Faster Iris Shadow Mapper ✅ ¹
Vanillin / Flywheel 🟧 ²
OptiFine ❌

✅ Works together.

🟧 Works, with a limit.

❌ Not supported.

¹ Recommended alongside ShadowLOD, they cover different parts of rendering.

² Chests, bells and minecarts drawn by Vanillin are not handled by ShadowLOD.

³ C2ME threads get a lower priority so world generation does not take frames from rendering. Remove "c2me" from lowPriorityThreads to give it full speed.

Requirements: Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47 or newer. Embeddium and Oculus are optional.

Installation: drop the .jar into your mods folder, or install it with the CurseForge app.

Settings

  • Numpad / : turn the mod on or off.
  • Numpad * : turn the shadow optimizations on or off.
  • F3 : live stats for every feature.

All settings are in the mod menu, or in config/shadowlod-client.toml.

Even more FPS: these settings trade a bit of visual quality for speed.

Setting Default Faster What you lose
occlusion false true Hides terrain behind hills and buildings. Slight pop-in when the camera moves fast.
shadowUpdateInterval 1 2 Shadows update every other frame and can lag behind when you turn.
shadowTerrainPercent 100 70 Distant terrain stops casting shadows sooner.
shadowEntityDistance 16 8 Mobs further away lose their shadow.
sunStepDegrees 0.25 1.0 Shadows move with the sun in visible steps.
impostorDistance 32 24 Mobs turn into pictures closer to you.
maxEntityDistance 128 96 Mobs disappear sooner.
maxBlockEntityDistance 32 24 Chests, signs and banners disappear sooner.
maxParticleDistance 40 24 Particles disappear sooner.

Terms

  • ✅ Play with it, make videos and screenshots with it.
  • ✅ Use it in modpacks, simply link back to the official page please!
  • ❌ Don't reupload the mod elsewhere.
  • ❌ Don't modify it or publish your own version without my permission.

See LICENSE.md for details.

© 2026 Hardek. This is NOT an official Minecraft product. Not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft.