Top 5 ways to improve graphics quality in Minecraft

It is no secret that Minecraft is not known for its graphics or stunning visuals. Even when it came out in 2011, it looked dated and old since it consisted of blocks and pixelated textures.

Over the years, however, it has grown on people and has become an icon simply because of its unique visuals. Moreover, since it has basic graphics, it allows players to easily play the game on any device and explore the near-endless in-game world without worry.

Nonetheless, players can get bored with the same old graphics Minecraft retains. Luckily, the game can be heavily modded, and its highly active community has come up with loads of texture packs, shaders, and mods that can change how it looks completely.

Note: This list is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinion.

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5 great methods to improve graphics quality of Minecraft

5) RTX (Bedrock Edition only)

Ray Tracing drastically improves how lighting and shadows look in Minecraft (Image via Nvidia)

Nvidia shook the world when they released their ultra-powerful and capable RTX graphics card series. Along with several other improvements, the company also showed how its newest ray tracing technology could transform how the sandbox game looks. Since Java Edition already had shaders to achieve these visuals, this was massive news for Bedrock Edition players who did not have a proper shader pack.

Players must have an RTX-enabled graphics card from Nvidia to use this feature and transform the game's graphics.

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4) Texture packs

Texture packs are brilliant way to improve the visual quality of Minecraft (Image via CurseForge)

Texture packs are a great way to change how the game looks without tinkering with its core engines. These change the blocks' and mob's textures without changing their behavior or properties.

Each facet of all the blocks in the game has 16x16 colored pixels; however, players can get much higher resolution textures for blocks and even mobs to make the game slightly more realistic.

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3) Shaders

Shaders completely change the lighting, shadows, and reflections in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

Shaders are some of the most popular third-party mods that millions of players use to change the visuals of the game. They can be installed with the help of other performance mods like OptiFine and Sodium with Iris.

Once enabled, they will add volumetric lighting and fog, along with reflections and improving shadows. Though shaders might take a lot of GPU power, it is worth it if the system can handle it.

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2) OptiFine

OptiFine adds a lot more video settings than what's already in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

OptiFine is arguably the most famous mod for the game. It is a performance mod that drastically smooths the game and increases FPS by improving chunk rendering mechanics and other core game engines. Apart from that, it also offers many new video settings for players to tweak.

This allows users to accurately toggle and set each and every aspect of the graphics. Though Sodium is also a worthy competitor to OptiFine, it does not offer as many graphics settings as the latter.

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1) Basic video settings

Some of the basic vanilla video settings must be tweaked first to bring a change in Minecraft's graphics (Image via Mojang)

Though there are many mods, texture packs, and shaders out there, players must first try to improve the graphics quality by simply tinkering with the basic video settings in the vanilla version.

They can change the general graphics settings, particle density, smooth lighting, biome blend, vignette, etc., to improve some basic graphics. The render distance can also be increased to see far-off places in the game.