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Optimizing Minecraft with LOD

Now, I'm no developer nor am I a coder; but from what I've gathered Minecraft renders every single block, including the entities. You can test this yourself with Optifine zoom or lowering your FOV (field of view). What I'm suggesting is to incorporate LOD--Level Of Detail--into the game. You can learn more about it with a quick google search (sadly can't link it) In a nutshell, it essentially lowers lowers the polygon count of a distant object in a 3D world (Yes, even a single polygon: a cube), which, in theory, should increase the performance of the game. As we all know, increasing the render distance in Minecraft lags; and it lags even the strongest of computers. And it's a shame because exploring is a great aspect of Minecraft: imagine, you're with your friend--dog or mate--you climb a mountain, and there you can see the horizon: the biome you've been looking for, about 4 kilometers away (4 thousand blocks) But, sadly, again, it's not possible for everyone; even those with the best of computers. Hope I can hear more from people that have a better understanding in coding.
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  • 25
    Registered User commented
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    As someone who uses Elytra a lot, this would be amazing...

  • 20
    Registered User commented
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    Seeing a long distance in Minecraft feels fantastic. There are a couple obscure mods which do this. Even implemented poorly, it makes the game look better; the poor graphics are all far away so it's fine. But done well, it really expands the possibilities for builds.

  • 10
    Registered User commented
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    love this idea, right now trying to find this mod for fabric but cant

  • 12
    Registered User commented
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    I agree LODs would be awesome. Someone already develops a LOD System for Minecraft, but indeed a native implementation would be great, then you could for example have a render distance of 4-8 chunks, while still seeing 30-50 chunks or more beyond it with LODs. So please Mojang implement this.

    Oh and by the way, a polygon is not a cube a polygon, is a triangle in most cases or a quad, so a surface consisting of 3-4 corners (vertices), multiple polys make up a model. I am not exactly sure how that principle is realised in a voxel game like Minecraft, but that is the general principle.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    This would be awesome with the upcoming Caves & Cliffs update, so you could see mountains from afar. I like the idea.

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    I agree LODs would be awesome. Someone already develops a LOD System for Minecraft,

    vanilla farplanetwo would be awesome

  • 6
    Registered User commented
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    I think even a very simple implementation of LOD would be great! Even something like combining multiple blocks into single entities/shapes in the distance would give a drastic boost to Minecraft's performance.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    This would especially help with all the new lag from 1.18 coming out.

  • 7
    Registered User commented
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    minecraft certainly needs this! Despite however long or difficult or much it changes the minecraft look, being able to see Minecraft and explore it in a much fuller beautiful light would be probably the best, most impactful update for minecraft in general, ever. Imagine being able to see the farthest mountains from your house, and see cool structures easily when exploring with elytra... (And of course if LOD was so good it let you see incredibly far, a blue light filter/shader should be implemented so that instead of seeing structures 10000000 blocks away, you see a faint blue blur of it (which happens IRL; far stuff is blue and fuzzy))

  • 10
    Registered User commented
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    Honestly this is the main reason why I often give up playing Minecraft in favor of other open-world games, Minecraft just begins to feel hollow and confining when you can only see a short distance in every direction. Especially with the new terrain in 1.19 we need LOD to properly see the beauty of this game.

  • 8
    Registered User commented
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    I agree, this would be great!. I think that they should take whatever the render distance is set to, triple that and render everything outside of the initial render distance in low LOD as well as push the fog barrier to the outer reaches of the LOD rendering. This could also give better functionality to the spyglasses they added, they could make the spyglasses render the area being viewed while looking through the spy glass.

  • 6
    Registered User commented
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    Agree, just imagine what minecraft will be like if lods was in the game, it would just fantastic.

  • 6
    Registered User commented
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    This this absolutely necessary

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Till Mojang gets around doing that, we can stick to fabric mods for LOD

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    This needs to become a thing, vanilla Minecraft should absolutely have LOD settings to bump up the perceived render distance. As someone else stated, the game often feels small and empty due to the small render distance and fog. Playing with mods that already implement this is wild, it feels so much more exciting to explore when you can actually see what's in the distance more realistically without the game running poorly.
    I really really hope this gets added in the future, it would be an absolute game changer

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    love the idea LODs Will help me a lot with my large scale projects (:

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I really hope this becomes native! I have no clue why Mojang haven't done this yet but with the recent controversies in Minecraft implementing this feature would definitely brighten up their image. I wouldn't even care if it was the entirety of an update, like just it and nothing else! This needs to be added to Minecraft, and hopefully, with the simulation distance that came in 1.18 (? maybe 1.19) it means they are already working on it.

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    Can you imagine the vast amount of new accounts sold after a promotional ad with and LOD enabled is pushed out? Minecraft is slowly losing relevance, as all games do, and it would rejuvenate the game in my opinion.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    This would be absolutely amazing for Minecraft's performance! Both versions of Minecraft NEED to use this, especially for bedrock players who play on lower end devices like phones tablets etc.  

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    FarPlaneTwo does this fairly well, even enabling you to view the whole world at once (although very laggy) but it's definitely possible and shouldn't even be that hard to implement with a dedicated team of coders. Minecraft desperately needs this feature with the caves update, since it's even harder to load all those extra blocks than previous versions, and some people are even downgrading to the previous versions to get a better experience.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    For the love of god we need this. I will take this update tomorrow even if it meant we had no updates for two years!

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    We need a dev to see this cause we need it

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Especially good for VR, no?

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    That's a Java-exclusive problem, the LOD pretty much exists in Bedrock from what I know but I'm not a 100% sure.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    As someone who's tinkered with programming for almost 8 years, I want to confirm to OP that what you said is MOSTLY correct, except for the fact that a cubs isnt a polygon - its a collection of them. Each face of a cube is comprised of two triangles - totaling 12 polygons per cube, however, this of course is a ludicrous poly count that even the beefiest computers would struggle to draw a single chunk. Instead, what Minecraft does under the hood is build chunks into a single 3D model via an algorithm. It occludes the faces that you wont be able to see (aka, doesnt add them to the model). This is why sometimes there are lag spikes when you destroy or place a block - your computer has to rebuild the chunk's geometry to show the hole you just dug / add the geometry for the block you just placed. You can get an idea of what the models really look like when you are in spectator mode, like when you can see caves but no dirt around you, because in normal gameplay conditions, you should never see the dirt block you are currently inside of

     

    What LODs do is simplify the models one step further - which would result in smooth terrain, but from the naked eye, it doesnt really matter in terms of aesthetic

     

    So yes, MC definitely needs LODs, like desperately. 

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    One potential way to do it, though I don't know how practical it is to do, would be to reduce the poly count of each cubic chunk to a set of overlapping polys, 17 on each axis, which would reduce the count from a possible count of 512 for a flat plane to only 2 for that same space, each with a block of offset for a total of 102 polys each with the colors being the average color of each block, mipmapping if necessary and partial transparency included where applicable, on an auto-generated 16x16 texture with complete transparency used where no blocks are present, possibly using a look-up table, removing any polys that don't have a visible texture on either side to reduce those that are unnecessary, and reducing to every other block, 54 polys, every 4th block, 30 polys, half-chunk, 18 polys, and full chunk, 12 polys, when moving further away, with their textures showing the colors of the blocks that would be visible from the player's perspective without reducing the visual quality too much until it would be difficult to see for anyone.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    This would be GREAT!

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I'm completely with you and would really like something like this though I have one little thing that stands against this. File size. Having LODs in the game will create more chunks and increase the file size if you've never loaded those chunks before. 

    Though I don't think this is something that will affect too much, and would love to see this!

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Even an LOD system just for block entities like Chests, Signs, and any other "block" that simply disappears when you get too far away would be great. With good LOD models it could reduce the need for those entities to be rendered at even shorter distances.

    Also, signs without text could be non-entity until the player is 1 chunk away so they could be interacted with.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    You mean like distant horizons? or using less complcated models at farther distances?