Solace 0.33

The night and water update.

Changes

• Cave glow haze: underground, the air around lava and other lights fills with a soft warm veil of their colour (Cave Glow Haze option).
• Smoother cave beams: light shafts through cave openings read as one smooth, soft beam.
• Night: deeper, calmer moonlight, so torches and lanterns form warm glowing islands.
• Moon path: on clear nights a calm silver path of glints lies on the water below the moon.
• Moon halo: only shows once the sun is down, no pale ring in the dawn sky.
• Wet ground in rain: ground reacts as soon as rain starts, turns darker and soaked, keeps a soft sky sheen, with puddles on paths and stone.
• Deep water: open ocean settles one calm step deeper into blue-indigo.
• Golden-hour rivers: rivers and shallows warm up with the low sun.
• Water colour: slightly calmer default saturation.
• Underwater: far open water melts into fog instead of a bright band.
• Daytime haze: distance and valley haze lean soft sky-blue instead of milk-white.
• Wind lines: only over terrain and foliage, never against the sky.
• Nether: fixed a blue patch from overworld sky effects; the crimson forest settles into a calmer rose-maroon; lava keeps its deep orange through the fog.
• Lava: slow cooling crusts with a hot rim drift across lava seas.
• End: soft violet mist under the island edges.

Solace 0.32

The light and shore update.

Changes

• Removed pollen motes: the drifting pollen and its gust drift are gone, along with the Drifting Pollen option.
• Low maps: valley fog and morning mist follow the visible ground on maps whose land sits far below sea level, instead of burying the whole landscape.
• Wind lines: more wind lines are in view at once; they taper from a thin tail to a soft body, rise and fall gently, show mostly with gusts, take a warm tint at golden hour, stay out of rain and thin out at the centre of the view.
• Colour: overall saturation and vibrance are a little lower by default, for a calmer look.
• Backlit foliage: at sunrise and sunset, grass and leaves seen against the low sun get a soft warm glow; pale leaves such as birch stay textured instead of washing out.
• Grass: tall grass and ferns share the grass top colour, smoothing and lighting at the root, so the blades melt into the lawn; only a soft gradient toward the tip remains. Grass block sides get a soft green fringe below the top edge.
• Sun spots: soft round spots of sunlight fall through leaf canopies onto the ground, leaning with the sun (Sun Spots option).
• Shore foam: a soft white foam line where water meets the shore, slowly washing up and drawing back, with a fainter second line further out (Shore Foam option).
• Bounce light: sunlit ground throws a soft warm-green light back onto tree canopies from below, overhangs and mobs (Bounce Light option).
• Aerial perspective: distant land fades softly paler and bluer into the sky, so ridges and forests stack into calm layers (Aerial Perspective option).
• Canopy light shafts: sun beams through trees now fan out as calm radial shafts that slowly sway with the breeze.
• Grass parting: grass and flowers bend softly away around your feet as you walk through them, shadows included (Grass Parting option).
• Cave light shafts: sunbeams through roof openings and cave mouths are softly warm, and deep caves keep most of the beam.
• Nether: far fog sinks earlier into a deep maroon, so cavern layers separate instead of forming one orange wall; lava looks calmer.
• Caves: darker where no sky reaches, so torches, lanterns and lava form warm, soft pools of light.
• Sculk: glows a soft blue in the dark and casts a faint cool light.
• Sunrise and sunset sky: richer, calmer gradients, a warm glowing horizon rising through coral into soft rose and blue.

Solace 0.31

The big wind and atmosphere update.

Wind

• Gust fronts: gusts now roll across the land as long, coherent fronts. Grass leans further as each front passes, and tree leaves lean and stir with the same fronts, so a breeze reads clearly over fields and forests.
• Wind lines: soft white wind lines drift with the breeze, draw themselves in, curl into a small loop and fade out. They are synced to the gusts, travelling at the same pace as the wave bending the grass below (Foliage > Wind Lines).
• Pollen on the wind: on sunny days a few soft warm motes float near the camera and surge downwind as a gust front passes, then settle again (Foliage > Drifting Pollen).
• Turning breeze: the wind slowly swings back and forth by about 35 degrees over roughly ten minutes, and grass, leaves, wind lines and gust fronts follow smoothly.

Weather

• No more rain streaks on the screen: rain is only the falling drops in the world now; night rain keeps its calm blue mood.
• Wet ground in rain: open ground slowly turns darker and richer while it rains, with a soft sheen at low angles and calm puddle patches on flat spots. Dries again afterwards (Weather > Wetness Strength).
• Rainbow: after rain, while the world is still wet, a soft pastel rainbow arcs across the sky opposite the sun (Weather > Rainbow).

Atmosphere & light

• Sunbeams through trees: long soft warm beams fan out of gaps in broken canopies, strongest in the morning and evening (Lighting > Sunbeams Through Trees).
• Warm light, cool shade: sunlit faces lean a little warm and shaded sides a soft sky-blue, stronger at dawn and dusk (Lighting > Advanced > Warm Light, Cool Shade).
• Layered ridges: far land fades into the blue haze in a few soft steps, so ridge lines read as calm stacked silhouettes (Fog > Layered Ridges).
• Soft morning mist: the low sunrise mist is one smooth veil that thins with height, swells slowly and glows peach toward the rising sun (Fog > Morning Mist).
• Dusk water glow: at sunrise and sunset a broad, soft warm light spreads over the water toward the low sun (Water > Surface > Dusk Water Glow).
• Painted water: brighter, clearer turquoise with a softer pale rim and broad, slow brush-stroke highlights instead of thin hard crest lines (Water > Painted Water).
• Cloud shadows: drifting cloud shadows are a little deeper with wider, softer edges, so big calm shade patches roll across the land.
• Puffy clouds: the low cloud layer forms big, rounded, soft puffs instead of block cells (Sky > Clouds > Puffy Clouds).
• Clearer field waves: the light bands rolling over meadows are broader, slower and easier to see (default raised, new strongest step).

Night sky

• Soft stars: stars are small soft round points with a faint glow that breathe very slowly, instead of hard square dots (Sky > Sun, Moon & Night > Soft Stars).
• Richer Milky Way: more stars gather along the Milky Way band.
• Moon halo: on clear nights the moon sits in a calm silver-blue glow with a faint wide ring (Sky > Sun, Moon & Night > Moon Halo).

Menu

• Reorganised settings: the main page holds the key sliders plus clear categories, crowded pages are split into sub-pages (for example Sky > Clouds / Fog & Haze / Sun, Moon & Night / Weather), fine-tuning lives in Advanced pages, and every option has a short name and a tooltip. Defaults are unchanged.
• Golden Rim option now shows up in the menu correctly.

Solace 0.30-dev

Features

• Grass gradient: grass blades shade from deep roots to bright, warm sunlit tips (new option, Grass Gradient).
• Character rim: mobs and players get a soft light fringe along their edges all day and softer shading, so they stand out like painted figures (new option, Character Rim).
• Bright sky: the clear day sky is brighter and more open, with one long smooth gradient and a luminous glow along the horizon (new option, Bright Sky).
• Painterly distance: far land and water melt into soft, brush-like patches while keeping their shapes (new option, Painterly Distance).
• Field waves: soft, light bands roll slowly across grassy meadows in the wind (new option, Field Waves).
• Aerial perspective: distant land now loses its detail and fades to a soft light blue, so far hills read as calm layered shapes.

Fixes

• Pale ground at night (sand, snow) stays calm under the moon instead of glowing white-lavender.
• Water at noon has a softer, calmer sun glint with gentle edges and fewer scattered sparkles.
• Forest at dusk reads calmer from a few blocks away, with softer light and dark leaf patches.
• Dusk clouds near the sun melt softly into the glow instead of showing pale blocky cells.
• Sun rays at dusk stay closer to the sun instead of fanning across the whole upper sky.
• Distant cliffs at dusk calm into the evening air instead of busy red and green speckle.
• Sand at noon is a warm calm tone instead of glaring near-white.
• Daytime clouds have soft pale undersides instead of grey-blue blocks.
• Dusk clouds away from the sun stay a soft dusty rose instead of olive.
• Far trees close their leaf gaps smoothly into calm canopy shapes, without jagged cut-out edges.
• Noon walls: sunlit sides sit one soft step below the tops, so block shapes read clearly.
• Underwater fog fades smoothly with depth and turns a calm deep navy at night.
• Block sides at noon get a soft sky light, so walls read as two calm tones instead of one flat shade.
• Water at dusk mirrors a soft rose sky and keeps some teal instead of turning into a flat orange sheet.
• Dusk clouds near the sun take on the warm evening sky tone instead of pale grey patches.
• Nether portals are a clear deep purple, without a milky veil or a light line along the obsidian.
• Pits and caves at sunrise keep neutral stone colours instead of a lavender cast.
• Sunrise river streak, sun glint, clouds and sun glow are peach-rose instead of gold.

Lighting

• Held Light (Cel Lighting > Held Light): a torch or lantern in your hand casts a soft warm pool of light around you at night and in caves, with a smooth round falloff around your hand (surfaces facing you catch a little more) in a warm, slightly softer orange; daylight is untouched.
• Stylised Lava (Cel Lighting > Stylised Lava): lava is a calm, deep orange with large, slowly drifting bright veins instead of a busy pale texture. At night it is slightly dimmer, so its glow stays orange instead of washing out.

Clouds

• Calmer horizon: the low cloud layer now melts softly into the sky far away and thins out just above the horizon, so the distance no longer looks busy.
• Warmer dusk cloud undersides: at sunset the shaded sides of clouds are a warm coral instead of grey-mauve.

Characters

• Golden Hour Rim (Cel Lighting > Golden Hour Rim): at sunrise and sunset, mobs and players get a soft warm fringe on their outline and top faces, strongest when they stand against the low sun.
• Soft Characters (Colour > Soft Characters): mobs and players get soft two-tone cartoon shading with a gently wrapped light and a brighter shade side, so they never look muddy.

Water

• No more bright streaks over seagrass: seagrass and kelp under the surface no longer show up as pale vertical stripes; the water keeps its calm depth colour over them. Kelp tips just below the surface no longer show as bright specks either.

Atmosphere

• Overcast sun: in rain the sun stays a soft pale glow behind the clouds.
• Softer close rain: raindrops right in front of the camera fade out gently, so rain reads as a calm veil instead of hard streaks across the view.
• Gentle lightning flash: a lightning strike briefly lifts the whole scene in a calm cool light instead of nothing at all; nearby strikes are a little stronger. The flash rises quickly and fades out softly over about a second, so several strikes in a row never flicker.
• Moonlit nights: nights are a soft silver-blue instead of deep saturated indigo, with gently lifted mid tones so grass, paths and shapes stay readable while the deepest shadows stay calm.
• Soft world border: the last stretch before the render distance melts smoothly into the horizon sky, so the end of the loaded world (also far water) no longer shows as a hard line. The pale haze band at the horizon is wider and softer and continues over far land, so it no longer sits as a flat strip above the terrain.
• Night leaves: trees at night are a calm muted blue-green instead of bright cyan, and close leaves keep their green instead of turning teal.
• Softer sun rays at dusk: the rays around the low sun blend in soft steps and fall less on near clouds, so they no longer draw pale fans across the sunset sky.
• Calmer fireflies: fewer fireflies with a slower, gentler pulse, so night meadows look calm instead of speckled.
• Valley fog (Sky & Fog > Valley Fog): a calm low-lying fog layer in valleys and over rivers.

Bloom

• Smoother bloom: the glow around bright areas is now built from soft blurred layers instead of scattered samples, so it is wide and even with no specks or rings, and it no longer puts a faint veil over the whole picture. An extra wide layer keeps the soft glow around the sun as strong as before.

Colour

• Soft highlights: the brightest spots drift toward a soft white instead of clipping to saturated yellow, so the sky around a rising or setting sun stays clean.

Textures

• Texture Calm (Colour > Texture Calm): smoother cartoon block textures that keep their blocky pattern.
• Far Soften (Colour > Far Soften): distant blocks and tree tops melt into soft, flat tones like a painted background, so far terrain no longer shimmers.
• Softer grass: calmer grass-top detail and a gentler colour sway.

Nether

• Calmer Nether look: far fog sinks into a deep maroon so cavern layers separate, the hottest surfaces are slightly less saturated, and thin edge lines only show up close by.
• Soft embers: a few round embers that slowly fade in and out instead of square blinking specks.

End

• Softer End sky: a gentle violet glow low on the horizon so the islands sit in light instead of a flat black void.
• Calm stars: fewer, soft round stars that hold still instead of shimmering single-pixel dots.

Solace 0.29-dev

Lighting

• Soft rim light (new option Lighting > Rim Light, with Strength and Width sliders). Edges facing away from the sun get a very soft, bright fringe when backlit: warm at golden hour, cool at night, with no grain. Water and foliage in front of gaps are left out.

Sunrise

• Softer sunrise. The strong golden wash over everything in the morning is gone. Sunrise is now a gentle peach-pink tint.
• The morning and evening tint fades out when little sky is visible, so digging down or standing in caves no longer turns everything yellow. Sunsets look the same as before.

Torches

• Only the flame glows. Torches, lanterns and soul torches now light up only at the flame; the stick is lit normally.
• The glow around the flame is small and tight and no longer smears or jumps when you move the camera.

Nether portal

• Nether portals glow in their own purple instead of being treated like glass: no white streaks or milky sheen, and the purple light they cast is softer.

Solace 0.28-dev

Clouds

• Three blocky cloud layers (new option Sky > Cloud Layers, on by default). Clouds now sit at three different heights, each drifting at its own speed, which gives the sky real depth:
  • Low layer: big, softly lit blocky clouds well below the main layer. They drift a little faster and cast soft shadows on the ground.
  • Main layer: the familiar Minecraft clouds, unchanged.
  • High layer: thin, pale, slow-moving blocky streaks high above everything else.
• Each layer moves in a slightly different direction, so the sky never looks like one flat sheet.
• Every layer fades smoothly with distance and stays clean on the horizon, with no grain or stair-stepping.
• New options: Cloud Layers (turn all extra layers on or off), Low Cloud Layer, High Cloud Layer and a Cloud Layer Speed slider.

Solace 0.27-dev

Smoothness pass

• No more grain or noise anywhere.
  • Shadows, the shadow smoothing filter and ambient occlusion now use fixed sampling patterns. They no longer change per pixel or per frame, so there is no crawling grain inside shadows or in corners.
  • Shadow edges use more samples with soft depth comparisons, which makes penumbrae smooth instead of stepped.
  • Light shafts use more steps with soft comparisons.
• Calmer water far away. Small glints and sun sparkles fade out with distance instead of turning into shimmering pixels. The '+' sparkles are sparser and gentler. Light-reflection streaks and the sunset streak on water are broken up smoothly in world space.
• Painted clouds and cloud reflections no longer alias near the horizon (detail fades out smoothly with distance).

Clouds

• Smooth far cubic clouds (new option Sky > Smooth Far Clouds, on by default):
  • Distant clouds get even shading.
  • Edge-on cloud faces fade out softly.
  • Clouds fade gently with distance.
  • No more scratchy or stair-stepped clouds on the horizon.

Wakes

• Wakes rebuilt from scratch. Boat and swim trails are now drawn into a map of the water around you. They stay where you left them on the water and fade out over a few seconds.
  • Turning the camera or switching to third person no longer moves or reshapes the trail.
  • The trail no longer depends on camera movement at all, and it is softer and subtler than before.

Grass

• Soft grass (new option Colour > Soft Grass, with a strength slider). A very gentle softening of grass: calmer grass tops with less texture pattern, a faint large-scale tone variation, soft contact shading at the bottom of grass block sides and at the base of grass plants, and less contrast on grass blades. Nothing new that draws the eye.

Solace 0.26-dev

Added

• Biome sky colours: the daytime sky now takes on the character of the biome you are in. Deserts get a pale, warm, hazy horizon. Badlands glow with a dusty terracotta haze. Snowy biomes turn crisp and icy blue. Swamps turn murky green-grey. Jungles turn deep, saturated turquoise. Cherry groves turn soft pink-lavender.
• Colours blend smoothly when you cross biome borders and fade out towards sunrise and sunset, so dusk colours stay untouched.
• New slider Sky > Biome Sky Colours (0 = off, 0.5, 1.0 default, 1.5).

Solace 0.25-dev

Fixed

• Wakes and splashes behind a boat or a swimming player flickered while moving. Their direction and strength came from the camera movement of a single frame, which jumps between zero and double speed because the game moves the player 20 times per second, not every frame. They now use a smoothed speed, and the foam pattern of the wake stays fixed in the water instead of sliding with the player.

New

• Fireflies: small yellow-green lights drift and blink near the ground around you on warm, clear nights (meadows, forests, cherry groves). Not in deserts, snow, rain or caves. Amount slider; off on Low.

Solace 0.22.1-dev

0.22.1-dev – 2026-10-18 (prerelease)

Fix release.

Fixed

• A brighter band on the ground in a ring a few blocks around the player. It came from the light of held items and other dynamic lights: block light used hard steps, and the grass colouring switched off inside that light even in full daylight. Block light now falls off smoothly, its daytime brightening is much weaker, and the grass colouring only eases off for torch light at night. Lanterns and torches still light the ground at night, with a soft edge instead of a ring.