Despite my extremely sporadic work schedule for this project, it's time for another update! I am very excited about this one - while the previous update mostly focused on technical changes, this one brings a lot more atmosphere to the game.
## Weather and Clouds
- The previous daily weather system has been replaced with a much more dynamic system, which some people will remember from extremely old Photon versions. This provides much more natural weather variation which is also influenced by the biome you're in.
- The weather affects the clouds, fog and even the waving plants.
- The downside of this is that you can no longer adjust the weather per-day.
- Cumulus congestus clouds may now appear alongside the regular cumulus clouds rather than replacing them.
- I've adjusted a lot of the cloud shapes and lighting. Altostratus-like clouds will also appear now.
- Reworked rainy weather.
- Lightning flashes now illuminate the sky.
- Added rainbows :)
## Crepuscular Rays
- Added crepuscular rays through the clouds.
- These are also controlled by the new weather system.
## Colored Lights Fog Scattering
- When _Colored Lights_ is enabled, the fog will be illuminated by light sources.
- I also made the voxel volume for the Colored Lights centered ahead of the player rather than on them, so you can see colored lights much further with no performance impact.
## Improved Indirect Lighting
- SH Skylight is improved by using bent normals and enabled by default.
- Added a new approximation for indirect subsurface scattering based on AO.
- This makes shaded areas and dusk/dawn look much more natural.
## Miscellaneous
- New fast fog approximation, which is used in reflections, behind translucents and when volumetric fog is disabled. This means that fog no longer disappears in these cases.
- Updated water waves - I think they look much nicer now and the pattern is much less repetitive.
- Updated the moon with a new textured look.
- Improved the Pale Garden atmosphere with dense fog and light emission from eyeblossoms.
- Added an edge highlight effect to the Nether portal.
- Added materials for 1.21.5 additions.
- Added two new menu translations
- Italian translation by Jmayk.
- Russian translation by Timtaran.
As always I have also spent quite a lot of time fixing bugs and implementing various optimisations.
- added Chinese translation by NakiriRuri and OrzMiku
- added some modded blocks to block.properties
- adjust TAA to reduce ghosting
- adjust fog
- enable water texture on underground water for improved visibility
- hardcoded materials for 1.21 and 1.21.4 additions
- improve cloud filtering
- improve rough reflections
- improve silver lining on clouds
- increase sky vibrance, especially at sunset
- multilayer reflections: water no longer loses its surface behind stained glass
- new cloud types: cirrocumulus clouds, noctilucent clouds
- new sky option: Galaxy (milky way in the night sky)
- small plants are displaced close to the player
- water wave height variation
- many bug fixes and optimisations