Excitement is building among Minecraft enthusiasts following the reveal of "Vibrant Visuals" at Minecraft Live. This significant graphical update is set to enhance the visual experience of Minecraft, starting with compatible devices running Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, with future plans to expand to Minecraft: Java Edition. The update introduces a suite of visual improvements including directional lighting, volumetric fog, pixelated shadows, and shimmering water effects. Importantly, Vibrant Visuals is purely a cosmetic upgrade and does not alter the core gameplay mechanics; for instance, the new visual shadows will not affect in-game light levels or the spawning of hostile mobs.
Minecraft Vibrant Visuals Comparison Screenshots
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Players will have the flexibility to switch between the new and classic visual styles with a simple button press, catering to those who prefer the traditional Minecraft aesthetic.
Agnes Larsson, the game director of Minecraft Vanilla, shared that the initial beta release of Vibrant Visuals is slated for a few months from now. "There's a lot of testing going on now to try to get it to as many platforms as possible, but it's important that it's high quality and good performance. So yeah, this truly is the start of the journey,” she stated.
Maddie Psenka, the senior product manager on the Vibrant Visuals project, elaborated on the development journey: “I think it's been a journey for a while. Something that we've wanted to do for the game. There has been past projects that we've had around graphics and wanting to do this kind of update, but I think this time we really wanted to take the space to build the foundations for this new mode. Not getting too ahead of things, making sure things were cross-platform and were really strong so we could build on top of that and release that with the community. We really wanted to give players what they wanted. We know this kind of visual update is something that they've been asking for a bit.”
Psenka also highlighted the team’s commitment to ensuring compatibility across various platforms: “We weren't going as fast as we could on PC to make things look really great and call it done. We wanted to make sure it worked on mobile, worked on console. There's a lot of complexities of course, as you can imagine when jumping across platforms and the different backends there. But it's something that we really took our time with to put something forward that we really are proud of.”
This update marks the beginning of a new era of graphical enhancements for Minecraft, with the Mojang team committed to refining and expanding these visuals over the coming years. Jasper Boerstra, the game’s art director, emphasized this ongoing evolution: “As Minecraft continues to evolve, I think we'll find new things to add to the graphics over the years, right? I mean, we're always in active development and we're here to stay for a long time. Minecraft is always going on. It's more relevant than ever. So yeah, I think these graphic updates, whenever something comes up or we get new ideas or there's player feedback and forth, we might look into even more features.”Vibrant Visuals will be a free update, reflecting Mojang’s commitment to enhancing the game without resorting to heavy monetization. This approach aligns with their philosophy against creating a "Minecraft 2" or leveraging generative AI technologies. Despite being 15 years old, Minecraft shows no signs of slowing down.
For more details on what's coming to Minecraft, check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025.
