Windowpane

Windowpane

Bring a new atmosphere to your Minecraft world with reflective water, dramatic skies, and warm lighting. Windowpane aims for a realistic feel while keeping Minecraft’s familiar blocky character.

Explore the look

• Reflective water that brings the surrounding sky and scenery into the scene.
• Three cloud layers with volumetric clouds, cloud shadows, and colorful sunsets.
• Detailed night skies with catalogue-based stars, the Milky Way, Moon phases, planets, meteors, and aurora.
• Lighting and shadows with screen-space global illumination and volumetric sunlight.
• LabPBR material support for compatible resource packs, with optional parallax mapping.
• World details including waving foliage, rain ripples, and seasonal color grading.

See the Gallery for daytime, sunset, and night views.

Current release: 2.2 Beta

Windowpane is still in development. Visual issues and compatibility problems may occur, and feedback is welcome.

Photosensitivity warning: Lightning can produce very bright flashes. A lightning-strength setting is available under WORLD in Shader Pack Settings. Please consider the flashing-light effects before using the pack if you are sensitive to them.

Installation

Windowpane is a shaderpack for Minecraft: Java Edition and requires a shader loader.

1. Install a compatible version of Iris for your Minecraft version.
2. Download the Windowpane ZIP from this project’s Versions tab.
3. Launch Minecraft and open the shader-pack menu in Video Settings.
4. Open the shaderpacks folder and place the ZIP inside it. Do not unzip it.
5. Return to Minecraft and select Windowpane.

Check the selected release’s compatibility information before downloading. OptiFine is also listed as a supported platform for the current release; use a loader version that supports your Minecraft version.

Performance and compatibility

The default settings match the HIGH quality preset. LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, and ULTRA presets are available in Shader Pack Settings. If performance is low, start by selecting LOW or MEDIUM.

Parallax mapping is available under MATERIAL and is off by default. It requires a resource pack with compatible height maps. LabPBR effects also depend on the material maps provided by your resource pack.

Distant Horizons terrain and water support is included. Use compatible versions of Minecraft, your shader loader, and Distant Horizons.

Performance depends on your hardware, resolution, render distance, and shader settings. Hardware-specific benchmarks are not yet published here.

If performance is low, try reducing render distance and resolution. If you encounter rendering problems, include your Minecraft version, shader loader version, GPU, and other rendering mods when reporting them.

Feedback and support

Join the Windowpane Discord for questions, feedback, and bug reports.

For bug reports, include:

• Windowpane version
• Minecraft and shader loader versions
• GPU and operating system
• A screenshot or short recording, plus steps to reproduce the issue

If you enjoy Windowpane, follow the project on Modrinth to hear about future releases.