At today’s Minecraft Live, Mojang Studios announced that Minecraft will be getting a major graphics mode update called Vibrant Visuals.
Have you ever wondered what it would look like to see a Minecraft world in high resolution? Mojang Studios looked at the 15-year-old game and thought that it could use an update, but they were faced with an important question: How do you upgrade Minecraft without losing what makes it “Minecrafty.” I was able to visit Mojang in Stockholm, Sweden, to go hands-on with the new Minecraft flying mount and Vibrant Visuals, and I have to say, Vibrant Visuals changes the landscape of Minecraft without the need for mods or shaders.
First thing first, this isn’t a mandatory graphic upgrade for Minecraft players. Vibrant Visuals will eventually be made available for all platforms with a simple toggle in your game’s menu. It was important to the team at Mojang Studios to make Minecraft and the new Vibrant Visuals mode available to as many people as possible without alienating their current player base. The new mode will be completely optional, and you can turn it off at any time.
I was able to speak to the team at Mojang Studios, who worked on Vibrant Visuals directly. Vibrant Visuals Producer Dejan Dimic described the update for players who haven’t seen it yet, “It’s a visual refresh for the core Minecraft game. So, it is our first step in our vision of what a modern look and feel of the game could look like. We’ve tried to balance modern rendering technologies with staying true to Minecraft and the art style. So, creating this cool balance while also trying to enable this to as many, many players as possible.”
What is exciting, especially for a console player like myself, is that this will bring a brand-new visual style to the Bedrock Edition. That means those who don’t have access to shaders or mods will be able to do this for the first time. Senior Product Manager on Vibrant Visuals Maddie Psenka noted that this is something players really seem to want,
“We want to get it out to as many players as possible. Right now, especially on consoles, it’s hard to mod and update your game. A lot of players like to play with visual mods, and we see it in the community a lot, so doing this will allow us to bring it easily to those players. It’ll be a toggle in the menu so players will be able to access Vibrant Visuals.”
She went on to explain how easy it will be to use, too, “This is a built-in new graphics mode, so it’ll include a bunch of new textures that work with this new mode to highlight a lot of the interesting physical properties of blocks and items and entities in the game. So there’s no need to sideload anything or download anything. It’ll just be on the simple toggle.”
One thing that the Vibrant Visuals team was adamant about was that Minecraft’s new mode was available to as many people as possible. Psenka ensured us that it would be across multiple platforms, thanks to being available on Minecraft’s Bedrock edition, “We want it to be available to as many devices as possible. We don’t have a full spec for devices yet, but we are targeting mobile devices, consoles and PC, of course, so we want to make it as available to as many players as possible.”
During my playthrough, I was able to check out Vibrant Visuals on a couple of different maps at varying times of day. The team had set up a simple one-button toggle so I could turn Minecraft’s Vibrant Visuals on and off, really amplifying the subtle yet somehow significant graphic differences. It’s odd how little, yet how much, Vibrant Visuals changes things. Occasionally, I would leave it on or off and be unsure what mode I was in, only to press the toggle and see just how obvious it was.
During sunrise, I was able to spot my pixelated shadow cast over the ladder I was climbing. Mobs cast shadows now, too, and it wasn’t anything I had ever noticed was missing until I saw it turned off. Reflections on the water are absolutely beautiful, but still keep that pixelated style Minecraft is known for. Underwater is also more realistic. Now, water feels murky and hard to spot creatures clearly, where as before, it was like it wasn’t there at all.
Of course, Vibrant Visuals wouldn’t be going live without testing, and Art Director Jasper Boerstra gave us some insight on what players have said so far, and it sort of reiterates what I saw, too, “I felt like we got a lot of validation of our goals. They were like, ‘Oh, it’s not too overpowering,’ ‘Oh, it still looks so much like Minecraft.’ You know, all of these kind of things that we set out to do. They were reacting that way. They were like, ‘Wow, this just looks like Minecraft, but enhanced,’ that stuff. So, I’m very, very confident that players will like this.”
“The team had set up a simple one-button toggle so I could turn Minecraft’s Vibrant Visuals on and off, really amplifying the subtle yet somehow significant graphic differences.”
Walking away from my visit to Sweden, I couldn’t help but just feel good about what Mojang Studios is creating. This team has been working on Vibrant Visuals for ages, but when asked what they thought the ratio would be for users who toggle it on versus “Vanilla Minecraft” or if it would be a letdown if everyone didn’t swap over, the consensus was the same. “We want people to experience Minecraft the way they want to,” said Executive Producer Ingela Garneji.
I had one last question for the Minecraft Vibrant Visuals team, “What is your favourite part of Vibrant Visuals?” I thought I knew the answer because, for me, it is the absolutely stunning reflections on the water. However, the team fought for who would get to say Pixelated Shadows. “I have to explain why I say Pixelated Shadows, but it’s because it’s so Minecraft. I mean, shadows in Minecraft, of course they’re pixelated!” said Garneji.
Vibrant Visuals is really something you have to toggle on in Minecraft to truly understand what it is. High-rez Minecraft is the best way I can’t describe it, but it still holds onto its boxy, pixelated style. Though I don’t have an exact date yet, Minecraft’s Vibrant Visuals mode will first release on the Bedrock Edition, with plans to bring it to the Java Edition in the future. With the A Minecraft Movie releasing soon, we are sure to talk more about Minecraft soon!
