Screenshot 1 of 4. A bright yellow tree stands in a yellow-tinted grassy field under a hazy pink sky in Mist.
What Mist works with.
| Platform | Java Edition |
|---|---|
| Loaders | Iris, OptiFine |
| Minecraft versions | 1.17, 1.17.1, 1.18.2, 1.19.4, 1.20.6, 1.21.11, 26.1.2, 26.2, 26.3 |
Mist is a realistic, path-inspired shader pack by xsoras, built on a full deferred HDR pipeline. It runs on Iris and OptiFine, targets a medium performance tier and is Java only. Its lighting is rebuilt from the gbuffer up rather than painted over vanilla.
Shader loaders and versions
- Iris and OptiFine: Minecraft 1.17 to 26.3.
What Mist changes
The pack started as a Photon-style rework and grew into its own thing. Every effect is meant to follow how light behaves, so a scene reads as lit rather than filtered.
- Screen-space global illumination that bleeds color from lit and emissive blocks onto their neighbours, so lava and ore glow tint nearby stone.
- Soft shadows with penumbras that widen with distance, plus colored shadows through stained glass.
- Water driven by a procedural wave height-field, with sky-colored reflections, refraction and screen-space reflections.
- A dedicated underwater look with depth absorption, animated caustics, drifting particles and light shafts.
- Raymarched volumetric clouds and god rays, with aerial perspective that fades distant terrain toward the sky color.
- Auto exposure and an AgX filmic tonemap, so stepping from a cave into daylight eases in.
Installing Mist
- 1.Install Iris or OptiFine for your Minecraft release. Mist needs no other dependency.
- 2.Put the pack's .zip in your shaderpacks folder.
- 3.Select Mist in your loader's shader menu.
New to shaders? The shader install guide covers both loaders, and fixing shaders that will not load helps if the menu stays empty.
Questions about Mist.
3 questions
Does Mist work with Iris and OptiFine?
Yes. The pack lists builds for both loaders across Minecraft 1.17 to 26.3, and neither build requires another mod. Install your loader, drop the .zip into the shaderpacks folder and select Mist in your loader's shader menu.
Does Mist work on Bedrock?
No. Iris and OptiFine are Java mods, and Bedrock cannot run them. Mist is a Java shader pack, so it needs one of those two loaders on a Java install. Bedrock players need a pack built for their own format, which this page does not cover.
Does Mist need a resource pack?
It runs without one, but its PBR reflections use metallic and smoothness values from resource-pack specular maps. A pack that ships those maps gives per-block gloss and metal tinting; plain vanilla textures give less to work with.
