Helix By LunoX

Helix — Advanced Performance Optimizations

Helix is a client-side Fabric mod for Minecraft 1.21.11 that adds 30+ unique performance optimizations not found in any other mod. It complements your existing optimization stack (Sodium, Iris, Lithium, etc.) without duplicating their work.

KEY FEATURES (enabled by default)

– Block Entity Distance Culling — Stop rendering chests, signs, bells, beds beyond a set distance. Huge FPS gain in bases and storage rooms.
– Particle Limit — Cap active particles to prevent FPS drops during combat, explosions, and thunderstorms.
– Tiny Entity Culling — Skip rendering entities that appear smaller than 2 pixels on screen. No visible difference.
– Smart Entity Render Distance — Different render distances per entity type. Items render at 16 blocks, XP orbs at 12, projectiles at 48, mobs at vanilla distance.
– Dropped Item Render Distance — Reduce how far items on the ground are visible. Less clutter and lag on mob farms.
– XP Orb Render Distance — Reduce how far experience orbs are visible. Less lag on XP farms.
– Rain Occlusion Culling — Don’t render rain/snow particles behind blocks. Big FPS gain during storms when indoors.
– Indoor Sky Skip — Skip sky rendering when under a roof. Saves GPU in caves and buildings.
– Indoor Star Skip — Skip star rendering when indoors or when stars are too dim.
– Cloud Simplification — Simplify cloud rendering beyond 16 chunks.
– Indoor Sun/Moon Skip — Skip sun and moon rendering when under a roof.
– Lightmap Throttle — Update light texture every 5 ticks instead of every frame. Saves CPU with no visible difference.
– Debug Render Skip — Skip debug rendering calculations when F3 is not open.
– Chunk Queue Cleanup — Remove cancelled chunk compile tasks. Reduces lag after explosions.
– Entity Outline Skip — Disable the glowing outline around entities.
– Vignette Skip — Remove the dark vignette in screen corners.

OPTIONAL FEATURES (disabled by default)

– Weather Radius Reduction — Reduce the area where rain/snow particles spawn. Major FPS gain during storms.
– Entity Shadow Skip — Disable the blob shadow under entities.
– Disable Underwater Overlay — Remove the blue tint underwater.
– Disable Hurt Camera Tilt — Remove camera tilt when taking damage.
– Disable Fire Overlay — Remove fire screen overlay.
– Disable Pumpkin Overlay — Remove pumpkin face overlay.
– Texture Cache Cleanup — Evict unused textures from GPU memory.
– Sound Buffer Cleanup — Evict unused sound buffers from RAM.

EXPERIMENTAL GPU PIPELINE (disabled by default)

– GPU HZB Occlusion Culling — Compute shader builds a Hierarchical Z-Buffer from terrain depth, then culls entities hidden behind terrain. Requires OpenGL 4.3+.
– GPU Unified Frustum — Single GPU compute dispatch replaces CPU frustum + distance checks.
– GPU Multi-Draw Indirect — Batch identical entities into a single draw call. Major gain on mob farms.

PERFORMANCE OVERLAY

Press F8 in-game to toggle a real-time overlay showing:
– FPS (color-coded: green > 60, yellow > 30, red)
– Frame time (ms) and GPU time (ms)
– 1% low and 0.1% low FPS
– Entity counts: total / visible / culled
– Culling rate and memory usage

REQUIREMENTS

– Fabric Loader 0.19.5+
– Java 21+
– Fabric API (required)
– YACL — YetAnotherConfigLib 3.8.1+ (required)
– ModMenu (recommended, for config screen)
– Sodium (recommended)
– OpenGL 4.3+ GPU (only for experimental GPU features)

COMPATIBILITY

– Sodium — Fully compatible
– Iris Shaders — Compatible (GPU culling auto-disables with shaders)
– ImmediatelyFast — Compatible
– Lithium — Compatible
– FerriteCore — Compatible
– More Culling — Compatible
– Dynamic FPS — Compatible
– Enhanced Block Entities — Compatible
– Entity Culling — Remove it (Helix supersedes it)

CONFIGURATION

Open Mods -> Helix -> Config in-game (requires ModMenu), or edit config/helix.json directly.

46 configurable options across 6 categories:
1. General — Master toggle
2. Entity Rendering — Culling, distances, shadows
3. World & Weather — Rain, sky, clouds, sun/moon
4. GPU Culling — Experimental compute shader pipeline
5. Visual Overlays — Vignette, hurt, fire, pumpkin
6. Advanced Tweaks — Texture/sound cache, lightmap throttle

Full English and French translations included.

CREDITS

Author: LunoX
License: LGPL-3.0-or-later
Version: 0.1.0-alpha

This mod is not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft. Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Studios.