Feedback: Fog Settings Rework

[FlashyReese]

Sodium Extra’s fog settings have been reworked, and I’m opening this discussion to collect feedback before treating the new behavior as final.

The current rework includes:

• Basic atmospheric fog distance and fog start controls
• Advanced per-dimension fog controls
• Fog shape options, including Vanilla/Cylindrical, Radial, and Planar
• Sky Fog and Cloud Fog controls
• Protected gameplay fog controls for effects like blindness, darkness, lava, powder snow, and water

Please use this discussion for feedback about:

• Confusing option names or tooltips
• Defaults that feel wrong
• Missing controls from the old fog system
• Visual issues with sky, cloud, terrain, or dimension fog
• Cases where fog affects gameplay effects unexpectedly
• Compatibility concerns with Sodium, resource packs, shaders, dimensions, or portals

When reporting feedback, please include:

• Minecraft version
• Sodium Extra version
• Sodium version
• Loader/platform
• Graphics API if relevant
• Screenshots or video if the issue is visual
• Your relevant fog settings
• The dimension/server/modpack/resource pack involved, if applicable

Bug reports with clear reproduction steps can still be opened as issues, but broader design feedback and tuning requests should go here.

[UxiiiUwU]

The protected gameplay fog seems to be a bit of a stretch. I get that blindness and darkness and lava might be a competetive advantage on SOME servers. However preventing players from using these features on the many servers where they're explicitly allowed feels overly restrictive.

Powdered snow? no clue when this ever affects competetive landscape
Blindness and darkness? they shouldn't be disabled for the most part since that's what the effects are for
Water fog? Definetely a cosmetic feature since doesnt really grant a competative advanage
Lava? This one is a big debate, since while i do understand the competetive landscape of it, there are also legitimate uses like Hypixel skyblock's lava fishing.

At most i would love to see a packet sent to the mod that disabled/limits those on a given server. That way if a server owner wants to disable/limit any of those they may do so.

I've asked an llm and it seems that this is possible? (probably since i dont know much about modding)

The only supported mechanism for this is custom payload/plugin message packets (historically CustomPayload, now custom payload packets in modern versions):

A vanilla client will ignore payloads on unknown channels (subject to the protocol rules for that Minecraft version).
Your modded client can register a handler for your channel (e.g. yourmod:server_config) and parse the data.

Caveat

The server must have some code that sends the packet:

a Paper/Spigot/Bukkit plugin,
a proxy plugin (e.g. Velocity/BungeeCord),
or a Fabric/Forge/NeoForge server mod.

Iil leave this as feedback for the dev to consider, since i love the mod 🔥

[lunaynx]

Lava? This one is a big debate, since while i do understand the competetive landscape of it, there are also legitimate uses like Hypixel skyblock's lava fishing.

I wouldn't call this a "legitimate use". While technically you're not gaining a significant unfair advantage over anyone by turning off lava fog in SkyBlock, it's not necessary in any way to play the game, and it has never been explicitly stated to be allowed by Hypixel. Also, I'd like to draw your attention to this clause:

https://support.hypixel.net/hc/en-us/articles/6472550754962-Hypixel-Allowed-Modifications

Though we do not provide a thorough list of disallowed modifications, a general rule of thumb is that any modification which provides any significant advantage to the players in any of our games - even if not in the specific game you are playing - using them anywhere on our server will be against our rules.

[FlashyReese]

At most i would love to see a packet sent to the mod that disabled/limits those on a given server. That way if a server owner wants to disable/limit any of those they may do so.

This is planned; the current idea is to use resource pack provided by servers which can't be disabled by the client; and we can make the mod check a configuration file in that resource pack ensure it's from the server and not overridden. This keeps it vendor neutral way to allow protected gameplay fog to be configured by the server.

[MCTMS8]

yea you are absolutely right this featur is bad for user, servers decide if they want to ban these modifiacations but it's not the mod that should blockk that. And the majority of servers will never add the plugin.
Now I need to download another mod to disable fog on SMP beacause of this change @FlashyReese
It should be the oposite if servers want to ban No fog they should put the plugin.

[lunaynx]

I would personally say since Sodium Extra is a general-use mod, it should not necessarily be too restrictive by default, especially since its effects are purely visual and the onus is on the user for the most part. However, there is also a very real risk of users simply not realizing it may be considered cheating by the server, especially in cases that may seem mundane to some, such as the Hypixel SkyBlock lava fishing example above.

What I would probably do is that if a server doesn't explicitly signal any preference (allowed/disallowed) about a certain "protected" fog option via a plugin channel or similar, allow users to disable those types of fog anyway but force them to click through a modal warning dialog each time they try to disable a "protected" fog type that has no server preference.

[FlashyReese]

I mean the main issue is I don't want to facilitate cheating/rule breaking on servers. Terrain/atmospheric fog is staying as a normal client option, since that was always the goal. Protected gameplay fog is different. Lava/blindness/darkness/water/powder snow are tied to gameplay states, and lava is the big one here.

Disabling lava fog is not literally xray since it doesn't reveal blocks through solid terrain, but it is absolutely xray adjacent in my view. In the Nether you can swim through lava pools and scout terrain, caves, entities, paths, and exposed ancient debris areas way easier than vanilla. That is not just cosmetic, so the burden is on people to justify why we should allow that by default on every server that never opted into it. "Servers should ban it themselves" isn't really enough for a general use mod.

If a server wants to allow it, there will be a clean opt-in path. But if there is no server signal, Sodium Extra is going to fail closed and keep gameplay fog vanilla. If someone wants a mod/client that removes gameplay fog everywhere regardless of server rules, that's a different policy choice than the one we are making.

I know Sodium Extra already has some features that certain servers may consider unfair depending on their rules. I am not claiming the mod is magically free of rule-sensitive settings. But that is not a reason to keep expanding that behavior. If anything, it is a reason to draw a clearer line now.