Vibrant Visuals is a visual graphics upgrade that will transform the way players experience Minecraft. Initially releasing for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, it is our developer’s vision for what Minecraft looks like with improved visual elements such as directional lighting, volumetric fog, and more.

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Let's talk about reflections & roughness on material surfaces and blocks!

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The roughness level on textures dictates how it reflects light and how shiny its surface is. We've created a MERS texture for every block in the game, to give blocks more depth and a richer surface. MERS Stands for Metallic, Emissive, Roughness and Subsurface Scattering. 
 

We'd like to hear your feedback on the shine/roughness of all the blocks in the game. 

  • Is there a particular block that you think is too shiny.. or not shiny enough? Let us know! 
  • Do you have feedback on the general shininess or something else? We'd love to hear your feedback!

To test these features you will need to enable “previews” on compatible Minecraft: Bedrock Edition devices by following the instructions at aka.ms/PreviewFAQ

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23 Comments

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  • 35
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    I believe the grass is a little too shiny, it looks glazed or plastic instead of grassy.

  • 20
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    Another block that is too shiny is pumpkins.

  • 16
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    I believe some other blocks besides water should have bump maps to make lighting bounce off them more realistically, like planks or bricks.

  • 10
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    Most of the blocks in the mangrove swamp were much glossier than I expected. Turning off reflections gave the colors a much more natural feel, and removed the pale sheen from the environment. I'm sure they're meant to be wet with broad leaves, but the reflections quickly outshine the textures.

  • 10
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    Like others have said, most of the natural blocks are too shiny. I do think, however, that this is also true for wool. I think compact blocks like iron, gold, diamond, emerald and copper along with quartz should all be slightly more reflective. They're extremely matte, sometimes more so than the grass. Maybe a reflectivity like that of resin?

  • 15
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    Foliage should get shiny during rain and a little bit after rain has stopped.

  • 8
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    The shininess of blocks looks wrong. It makes all blocks look smooth, which runs contrary to the effect the textures themselves are trying to get across. also, the light in general (but including reflected light) is washing out the textures/colour too much. A green surface that has maximum brightness shining on it should not look like a paler green - it should look more vibrant.

    I feel the HDR implementation should take the original texture colour values as being maximum brightness, and take it DOWN from there instead of washing them out. Increase the luminance, sure, but not the white levels!

  • 6
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    When you turn ON the reflections toggle in the settings it makes all blocks look white and reduce the vibrance of the blocks and the world. There needs to be a separate toggle for water reflections and block reflections so we can be able to turn them ON/OFF separately. 

  • 7
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    I believe in my testing. I like the glassy look of obsidian; however, crying obsidian doesn't currently have the same effect, nor have emissive textures for the 'crying' parts. And also, the respawn anchor product of obsidian doesn't either.

    I would like to see more apparent reflection in the glass. When you get close up, you can see yourself, all of the mineral blocks, like emerald, amythest, diamond, gold, copper, maybe iron, and even netherite (although that could be more rustic and duller than the others), don't have any reflections or shine currently, and Redstone and its products is not emissive enough. I'm unsure about lapis and coal, which is just coal, but maybe polished blocks like granite, diorite, and andesite have a slight wax-like reflection.

    Also, quartz is too

    It would be interesting if this also would take effect on tools, armor, and detail textures like the saw on the crafting table, the blaze rod in brewing being emissive, the diamonds on the corners of the enchanting table, and so on..

    Particles in some areas, although not blocks, feel they have lost a bit of emission, notably enchanting glyphs, Fireflies, Nether Spores, and basalt delta ash, and on topic, maybe make rain finally less opaque and more transparent.

    Regarding new technology, I'd love a depth mapping feature allowing more context with many of the game's blocks, similar to RTX's depth mapping, simply a fraction of a pixel depth to blocks

  • 6
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    Metal Blocks shouls be shiny.

  • 5
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    From a material standpoint, the grass technically has the correct roughness, but it looks too shiny because what the flat texture is trying to emulate is the fluffy strands of grass. As a whole, a bed of grass wouldn't look that shiny because of all the angle variation of the blades. So, it would look more correct to raise the roughness of the grass.

  • 1
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    Metal and other highly reflective blocks should have brighter reflectiveness than the majority of other blocks.

  • 2
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    Settings that affects the overall roughness of all blocks could be implimented, if there isn't already.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Glass is the block I find to be not nearly reflective enough, it almost looks like the metal blocks, such as diamond or gold blocks, more than actual glass. If possible, an appearance similar to the ray-traced reflections found in water would be great!

  • 3
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    I feel like farmland should be more reflective and wet looking whenever it's fully hydrated, as it looks a bit odd when put next to dry farmland or dirt. And potentially, making it look a bit more bumpy could also help with the "flat" look.

  • 1
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    On MC Preview PS4, there is no shininess on grass. Please make it more shiny

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    On grass some pixels should reflect  others should be dark same for leaves and flowers

  • 1
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    I onestly really like the plastic look of blocks: grass maybe doesn't really look like grass but Minecraft is a game made out of cubes with flat sides, I feel like making everything a bit plastic like fits really well the cubes concept and make's everything "cuter" like if it was a toy.

    I think it's the same reason why I never liked high resolution texturepacks (especially the photorealistic ones) you end up with the contrast of a realistic or tridimensional texture on a flat face of a block. and since the core of minecraft is blocks I think it should embrace the fact that block's surfaces are flat.

    (a bit of a Highmap for the singular pixel is still fine)    

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I would like certain blocks to have a relief, so that not everything looks, let's say, "plasticized", for example, in the grass or the sand, that they have certain pixels with relief so that it looks like... that it has relief.

     

  • 0
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    There is the issue that the defult settings give everything a hazy and plastic look. While the water and shadows are nice, everything end up being way too bright or completely dull. There is the issue with blocks being too saturated and clean, lacking any detail that they had since it can't be seen. It give the game a look of a cheap knock off.

  • 1
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    Gioco giornalmente con altri tre player in un Realm, ognuno di loro in differenti console e differenti televisori: Nonostante ciò, tutti e quattro siamo accecati da come riflette il sole su determinati elementi; specialmente il verde dell'erba, la sabbia ed alcuni tipi di assi di legno. Il problema viene amplificato a dismisura quando il sole è alto in cielo.
    Attualmente, personalmente, penso di dover diminuire le ore di gioco o quanto meno tornare alla grafica precedente. Siamo certi riuscirete a patchare, garantendo un risultato meno brillante e più concreto. Buon lavoro! 

  • 0
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    Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right section for lighting things, but I want to add my bit as well. For the most part, I enjoy VV during morning and evening, but I have a small house that's pitch dark in most places despite being fully lit inside and caving is a stumbling nightmare. Maybe light sources could have a larger light-emitting radius or something to compensate the darker areas? I don't want to have to torch spam everywhere ;-;

    I like how the water looks with VV, especially with the reflections in them, but lava is a bit of an issue for me. I have sensory issues and the lava is WAY too bright when being contrasted to nearby blocks like stone or in the Nether (I can't currently go in the Nether without getting a migraine from eye strain if I have VV active).

    A lot of the blocks somehow feel flatter now (lava, grass, wood, etc.) and warmer colours especially are extra warm to the point yellow looks more orange/red and my pink pig is somehow red. Another comment mentioned having the "og" (the fancy graphics) colours be the "brightest" then lower brightness from there, and I think that would be good!

    One thing I might suggest too is that instead of making nighttime pitch dark, maybe adjust the saturation of colours depending on light level. I've noticed irl that colours are hard to distinguish in low lighting, so many that could be used? At least on the surface? and maybe leave the total darkness for the warden or thunderstorms.

    This was a lot of words lol. thx for reading

  • 0
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    It does kind of feel like a "poor-man's RTX", doesn't it? Kinda like the realization of a previously hypothetical "what might ray tracing look like on a PS3". That said, it does at least still vastly improve the overall visuals.....IF one is comfortable using the default texture pack, that is.

    Personally, I cannot stand the default texture pack. I've never liked it. If anything, the enhancements of Vibrant Visuals only cast what I dislike about it in even sharper relief. I split my time between the "Natural" texture pack and the "City" texture pack (mostly City), where Vibrant Visuals is quite conspicuously unsupported.

    I did briefly switch to the default pack, just so that I could experience Vibrant Visuals, and I *absolutely* see the charm of it! I absolutely see what value it brings and what joy it offers. However, for me, with as deep and acute as my distaste for the default texture pack is, the default texture pack *with* Vibrant Visuals, for me, at least, amounts to a massive "net negative" vs City or Natural *without* it.

    That said, now that I've had a chance to experience Vibrant Visuals for myself, its conspicious absence on those packs....sorta has the effect of wrecking those packs for me as well now, creating a sort of "lose/lose" which actually substantially dimishes the incentive to play Minecraft altogther. 

    So, over the river, and through the woods, to the question I FINALLY get: are there any plans to add this support down the road? And if so, do we know when?