MCTrace

⚡ MCTrace

Next-Gen Hardware Ray Tracing, AMD FSR & Modern Vulkan Shaders for Minecraft

MCTrace transforms Minecraft Java Edition into a modern, photorealistic rendering playground powered by Minecraft 26.2's native Vulkan backend and NeoForge. Experience real-time hardware ray tracing, temporal upscaling via AMD FSR, true 10-bit scRGB HDR display support, and full LabPBR material realism.

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🌟 Highlights at a Glance

• 🚀 Vulkan Hardware Ray Tracing: Native acceleration structures (BLAS / TLAS) and inline compute ray queries (VK_KHR_ray_query) for sharp penumbra sun/moon shadows and physical ambient occlusion.
• ⚡ AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 2 / 3): Temporal upscaling with subpixel camera jitter, 2D motion vector extraction, and RCAS edge sharpening for fluid high-framerate gameplay at 1440p and 4K.
• 🌈 True 10-Bit scRGB HDR & Wide Color Gamut: Native HDR swapchain presentation with DCI-P3 / BT.2020 gamut expansion and an interactive, AAA-grade in-game display calibration screen.
• 💎 LabPBR & Next-Gen World Shading: GGX microfacet specular reflections, screen-space water reflections (SSR), dynamic underwater caustics, and Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM) for true 3D surface depth.
• 🌿 Subsurface Scattering (SSS): Sunlight diffuses through leaves, grass, and foliage with natural backlit translucency.
• 💡 Dynamic Radiosity & Colored Block Lights: Emissive blocks cast vibrant colored light, with built-in held dynamic lights.
• 🎨 Shader Pack Ecosystem & Instant Hot-Reload: Load custom shader packs from your .minecraft/shaderpacks/ folder, and press F4 to recompile and hot-reload shaders in milliseconds without restarting the game.
• 🛠️ In-Game Settings GUI: Configure all engine features on the fly by pressing F6 or selecting MCTrace in the NeoForge Mods menu.

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📸 Feature Deep-Dive

🚀 Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing

MCTrace bypasses legacy screen-space approximations by constructing GPU Top-Level (TLAS) and Bottom-Level (BLAS) Acceleration Structures directly from Minecraft's voxel chunk geometry and dynamic entities:

• True Distance Shadows: Accurate contact hardening, soft penumbra, and cast shadows from blocks and mobs.
• Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion (RTAO): Rich contact shadows in deep caves, corners, and foliage without screen-edge cutoff.
• SVGF Denoising Pipeline: Spatio-Temporal Variance-Guided Filtering reconstructs noise-free images from minimal sample counts.

⚡ AMD FSR Temporal Upscaling

Render internally at a lower resolution and temporally reconstruct a pristine image up to 4K:

• Presets: Ultra Quality (0.77x), Quality (0.67x), Balanced (0.58x), Performance (0.50x), or Off (Native 1.0x).
• Subpixel Jitter & Velocity Buffers: Eliminates temporal shimmering and edge crawling during rapid camera turns.
• Robust RCAS Sharpening: Fine-tune image clarity without over-sharpening artifacts.

🌈 True HDR & In-Game Calibration Screen

Unlock the full potential of your OLED, Mini-LED, or HDR-capable display:

• Built-in Display Calibration Screen with live visual test patches.
• Fine-tune Peak Luminance (supports up to 2000 Nits, with presets for popular monitors like 456 Nits), Paper White UI Luminance, Black Level Floor (0.000 nits for OLED), and Middle Gray Contrast.
• DCI-P3 & BT.2020 Wide Color Gamut for deep greens, fiery sunset oranges, and neon reds.

💎 LabPBR Texturing & Volumetric Atmosphere

• LabPBR Standard: Seamlessly compatible with community LabPBR resource packs featuring _n (normals) and _s (smoothness / metalness / reflectance) textures.
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM): Cobblestone, bricks, and bark pop with real geometrical relief and self-shadowing.
• Atmospheric Volumetrics: Dynamic god rays piercing through dense tree canopies and volumetric fog responding to weather.
• Dynamic Weather: Realistic wetness accumulation and glossy puddles forming during rainstorms.

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🎮 Controls & Keybinds

Key	Action	Description
F6	MCTrace Settings GUI	Open the in-game configuration screen to adjust presets, ray tracing, HDR, and shaders.
F4	Hot-Reload Shaders	Instantly recompile SPIR-V shaders in memory without reloading textures or restarting Minecraft.
K	Toggle Shading Effects	Quickly toggle all MCTrace post-processing effects on and off for instant comparisons.

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⚙️ 1-Click Quality Presets

MCTrace features three optimized 1-click presets accessible from the top of the F6 menu:

• ⚡ Performance: Fast Ray Query, FSR Balanced, subtle SSAO, optimized volumetric fog and god rays, foliage SSS, dynamic lights, and rain wetness. Perfect for mid-range GPUs.
• ⚖ Balanced (Default): Standard Ray Query, FSR Quality, standard SSAO, full volumetrics, water SSR & caustics, LabPBR, POM (0.04x depth), foliage SSS, and hardware RT shadows.
• 💎 Ultra HDR / Cinematic: Maximum ray query samples, FSR Ultra Quality, enhanced SSAO, boosted god rays, POM (0.06x depth), and True 10-bit HDR wide-gamut tuning.

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📋 System Requirements

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Minecraft	Java Edition 26.2	Java Edition 26.2
Mod Loader	NeoForge 26.2.0.86+	NeoForge 26.2.0.86+
Java Runtime	Java 25 or 26 (64-bit)	Java 25 or 26 (64-bit)
Graphics API	Vulkan 1.3+ with Ray Tracing (VK_KHR_ray_query)	Vulkan 1.3+ with Ray Tracing
NVIDIA GPU	GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB)	GeForce RTX 3070 / 4070 or newer
AMD GPU	Radeon RX 6600 XT (8GB)	Radeon RX 7700 XT / 7800 XT or newer
Intel GPU	Intel Arc A580 / A750	Intel Arc A770 or newer

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🚀 Installation & First-Time Activation Guide

IMPORTANT

⚠️ First-Time Setup: Up to 3 Game Launches Required

Minecraft 26.2 defaults to an OpenGL graphics engine. Because MCTrace transitions the engine to native Vulkan and configures NeoForge's windowing subsystem, your first-time setup may take up to 3 game launches to reach full steady state:

1. Launch 1 (Mod Installation & OpenGL Baseline):
   • Drop mctrace-1.0.0.jar into your .minecraft/mods folder and launch Minecraft normally.
   • MCTrace automatically updates config/fml.toml (earlyWindowControl = false) to prevent GLFW error 65540.
   • Open Options →→ Video Settings →→ Graphics Backend, switch the backend to Vulkan, and exit the game.
2. Launch 2 (Vulkan Handshake & Pipeline Generation):
   • Launch Minecraft again. The game now boots natively into Vulkan without OpenGL window conflicts.
   • MCTrace queries your GPU for ray tracing extensions (VK_KHR_ray_query, VK_KHR_acceleration_structure) and compiles initial SPIR-V pipelines.
3. Launch 3 (Full Steady-State Activation):
   • Launch Minecraft once more. The Vulkan swapchain, TLAS scene graph, SVGF denoiser passes, and AMD FSR temporal reconstruction are fully active and persistent!

(💡 Pro-Tip: If you launch Minecraft directly with the --renderBackend vulkan JVM argument, MCTrace activates immediately on the very first launch).

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🎨 Custom Shader Packs

MCTrace supports custom Vulkan shader packs:

1. Open the in-game settings screen with F6 and click Shader Packs....
2. Click Open Shader Pack Folder to reveal .minecraft/shaderpacks/.
3. Drop any compatible .zip or uncompressed shader folder into this directory.
4. Select your pack from the list and hit Done!
5. Press F4 during gameplay to hot-reload shader changes instantly while developing.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

<details data-line-start="125" data-line-end="128"> <summary data-line-start="126" data-line-end="126">Is MCTrace compatible with OptiFine or Iris?</summary>

No. OptiFine and Iris are built entirely on legacy OpenGL pipelines. MCTrace is a completely rewritten, modern Vulkan ray tracing engine. Do not install OptiFine or Iris alongside MCTrace.

</details><details data-line-start="130" data-line-end="133"> <summary data-line-start="131" data-line-end="131">Why do I get GLFW Error 65540?</summary>

This occurs if an early window attempts to create an OpenGL context when Vulkan expects GLFW_NO_API. MCTrace includes an automated bootstrapper that disables NeoForge's early loading window (earlyWindowControl = false in config/fml.toml). Ensure you complete the 3-launch setup described above.

</details><details data-line-start="135" data-line-end="138"> <summary data-line-start="136" data-line-end="136">Can I use MCTrace on a GTX 10-series or older GPU?</summary>

No. MCTrace requires hardware support for the VK_KHR_ray_query and VK_KHR_acceleration_structure Vulkan extensions, which require NVIDIA RTX (Turing+), AMD RDNA2 (RX 6000+), or Intel Arc graphics cards.

</details><details data-line-start="140" data-line-end="143"> <summary data-line-start="141" data-line-end="141">Does MCTrace work on servers / multiplayer?</summary>

Yes! MCTrace is 100% client-side. You can connect to any vanilla or NeoForge 26.2 server without needing the mod installed on the server.

</details><details data-line-start="145" data-line-end="148"> <summary data-line-start="146" data-line-end="146">How do I enable True HDR?</summary>

Ensure HDR is enabled in Windows Display Settings (Win + Alt + B). Launch Minecraft with the Vulkan backend active, press F6, toggle True HDR Display to ON, and click Display Calibration... to calibrate your monitor's peak and paper white nits.

</details>

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📦 Modpack & Redistribution Policy

• Modpacks: You are free to include MCTrace in any public or private modpack on CurseForge, Modrinth, or custom launchers.
• Source Code & Contributions: Licensed under the MIT License.
• Bug Reports & Feedback: Please report any issues or GPU feature requests on our GitHub Issue Tracker.