Sodium

Sodium 0.8.12-alpha.1 is a backport of modern Sodium 0.8.12 to Minecraft 1.21.1. This experiment has graduated to alpha status. The degree to which we commit to supporting this branch will be determined by testing and by how well it works and integrates with the ecosystem. The quality of this version is expected to further improve it gets used, we discover quirks, and receive feedback.

• Significantly improved the performance of rendering the world (up to +115%) on some computers.
• Greatly improved the rendering of transparent objects with complex models, especially when submerged in water.
• Lots and lots of improvements to the user experience in the Video Settings menu.
• Reduced latency and micro-stutter when updating chunks in the world.
• Slightly faster entity rendering, especially for transparent mobs and particles.
• Improvements for hardware and mod compatibility.
• ...And many more bug fixes and improvements...

It includes the backport of our Config API and other conventions that will hopefully make it easier for mods to interact with Sodium across multiple versions. This release series doesn't get released at the same cadence as our current releases for Minecraft 26.1 and 1.21.11, and doesn't follow the same alpha/beta numbering.

Please participate in testing this release, coordinating on mod compatibility, and giving feedback on our discord server.