Sodium

This version is probably one of the biggest updates for Sodium yet, and contains a massive number of performance enhancements, bug fixes, and improvements.

With thanks to the following contributors: @jellysquid3, @IMS212, @PepperCode1, @comp500, @MCRcortex, @Noryea, @embeddedt, @Grayray75, and @Moulberry.

Compatible with Minecraft 1.20.1 only and Fabric Loader 0.14 or newer.

Note: Many mods which interact with Sodium are likely to be incompatible with this update. You may have to wait for an update from the authors of those mods.

Highlights

• Dramatically improved the performance of terrain rendering in nearly every way.
  • Chunk loading is dramatically faster, uses much fewer resources (both CPU and RAM), and should feel much smoother than before.
    • The amount of time needed to load new chunks (referred to as "meshing") has been greatly reduced, and is anywhere from 40% to 60% faster than the previous release.
    • Memory allocation rate while loading the geometry for new chunks has been decreased by around 80%.
  • Occlusion culling is anywhere from 25-45% faster now, and the long-standing bugs with it have also been fixed
    • You've probably experienced those issues where certain parts of the world don't seem to render when looked at from certain angles. Well, those issues are fixed now!
  • Terrain rendering now uses shared index buffers which can reduce video memory bandwidth/usage requirements by up to 25%.
• Fixed major performance regressions NVIDIA graphics cards. (anywhere from 200% to 300% faster than previous release...)
  • If you were previously disappointed by the performance you were getting on a NVIDIA GPU, try this version.
• "Render Pass Consolidation" has been added, which greatly reduces the number of render passes needed for the world (hugely improves CPU and GPU utilization.) This also helps to prevent excessive amounts of overdraw, and ensures larger batches of geometry are sent to the GPU for rendering.
• "Block Face Culling" has been significantly improved, which allows for more blocks to be eligible for early geometry culling (hugely improves GPU utilization.) This generally makes the biggest difference in foliage-heavy scenes.
• Many other performance enhancements which are too numerous to describe here.

Other notable changes

• A lot of issues with biome color blending have been fixed. This means it is no longer incorrectly applied to certain blocks, especially those from other mods. Additionally, it's much faster to calculate the colors used by certain blocks, which helps improve world load times.
• A lot of issues were also fixed with smooth lighting! This should fix some issues with certain resource packs, and the lighting with blocks like Sculk Sensors.
• Mip-mapping has been greatly improved so that terrain no longer has a black outline around certain textures when viewed at extreme angles. (Note: This has the consequence that some textures, such as those used for leaves, may seem slightly brighter than they did before. However, we think this generally looks more accurate to the original texture work, and believe the original behavior was a bug.)
• When supported, the mod will now request a "No Error Context", which allows the graphics driver to skip some unnecessary CPU overhead during rendering. This slightly helps improve performance on some graphics card drivers.
• A new driver compatibility and workarounds system has been implemented, which helps to inform the user of possible performance issues & automatically fix them.
• Line rendering (used by things like Structure Blocks and Hitbox Rendering) is no longer broken.
• ... Many other improvements for mod compatibility.