Vanilla RTX v1.21.50 Release: A Bevy of Bugs, Begone!

Vanilla RTX's fifth major revision for 1.21 is here! This update is largely about working around a huge number of bugs and enhancing vanilla resources for ray tracing. It vastly expands the Experimental option and adjusts assets beyond blocks to enhance their compatibility and appearance with ray tracing.

Vanilla RTX & Vanilla RTX Normals v1.21.50 / Release Notes:

• Revamped blast furnace normal maps, new style that aligns with similar items

• Other adjustments:
- Improved chiseled bookshelf normal maps
- Improved cauldron top heightmap with better edges
- Adjusted slime and honey opacity, now per-pixel
- Decreased End dimension fog density, sky now appears more purple

• Updated Chinese and Taiwanese translations for better accuracy, courtesy of "hermitisla"

▣ Experimental Updates:
To use Experimental features, you must switch to Experimental option from settings of Vanilla RTX.

• Ender Dragon's mouth, Magma Cube's inside lava and their eyes, and Enderman, Spider, and Phantom's eyes now glow with RTX.
Note: This doesn't come with ray-traced emissivity, there may be unintended effects when ray tracing is off. In general its worth remembering changes in experimental option are primarily aimed at RTX mode, with game resources modified for proper functioning in ray tracing only.

• Fixed invisibility effect not properly hiding models of the following entities when ray tracing is enabled: Spider, Cave Spider, Phantom and Enderman

• Fixed villager texture issues (biome clothing, professions, and levels) They now display correctly with ray tracing. This is is the same issue as the one listed in the known ray tracing issues list on the Minecraft website.
Notes:
Models for villagers have been adjusted to allow textures to display correctly with RTX while maintaining the vanilla game appearance. Minor disparities or issues may be present.

• Fixed missing clothing and profession gear on Zombie villagers with ray tracing.

Known issues with villagers and zombie villagers:
- Performance impact may be larger when too many villagers are present.
- Texture Z-fighting occurs at high distances without ray tracing.
- Still villager heads may occasionally flicker with ray tracing.

• Glasses of Cartographers, Librarians, and their Zombie counterparts are now rendered as glass.

• Improved chiseled bookshelf book front texture workaround, you may now be able to place books in all possible combinations.
Textures have been manually defined for all remaining states in all directions (North, West, South, East) to allow for PBR texture assignment.

Notes: Prior to this update, this bug was fixed in the Experimental option, but textures were static (only empty and occupied states with PBR textures). In vanilla Minecraft, this is handled internally, and Mojang did not account for ray tracing, leading to Z-fighting and the impossibility of PBR textures. This fix could break in future Minecraft updates if the handling of chiseled bookshelves changes, since the current one has its own issues.

• Restored Warden's bioluminescent layer with ray tracing. Warden heart now glows and beats, spots display properly with ray tracing.

• Adjusted Nether Update biomes' ambience particles for ray tracing

• Fixed snow golem head remaining unaffected by ray tracing, the pumpkin head is no longer rendered similar to particles.

Known issue:
Invisible Snow Golem head still renders as a particle.

• Improved breeze wind animation

• Fixed an issue where tamed cats would not cast full shadows
Known issue: Tamed cats' collar color no longer displays without ray tracing
Note: Vanilla RTX and especially the experimental subpack are intensely focused on ray tracing mode of vanilla Minecraft only, meaning there can be side effects without ray tracing, I will try to address these as time goes on, however they are lower priority.

• Fixed an issue where Slime and Magma Cube mobs would flicker and pixelate their surroundings with ray tracing.

• Improved fix for dried kelp bottom texture; in-world and inventory textures now better match vanilla Minecraft

• Fixed an issue in Vanilla RTX Normals where the world would appear warped and bent when viewed from certain angles in End Portals.

• Reverted all flame/lava and soul flame particles to be fully opaque (smokes remain semi-transparent)

• Adjusted beacon beam texture for ray tracing

• Updated the fix for TNT Minecart and Command Block Minecart blocks rendering as particles:
- Updated models to better match vanilla Minecraft, eliminated lines due to slightly disjointed models
- Fixed Z-fighting issue when blocks in minecarts were viewed from afar; removed rasterized parts
- Fixed an issue where Minecart's geometry would shift around briefly after being placed on a turned rail

• Cleared unnecessary files & references.

Ending Notes:
This was a unique update to work on and took a while to deliver as it focused on fixing almost every remaining major Minecraft bug that could potentially be fixed.

These bugs were fixable due to being data-driven and could be edited to work with ray tracing. Conversely, there are items that are handled mostly internally that cannot be modified or fixed (unless you happen to have access to the Minecraft's source code) -- this means issues with banners, maps, and similar bugs can not be fixed.

The quest to address more issues doesn't stop here. There will be more fixes in the future for both existing and new Minecraft additions, as Mojang is unlikely to account for RTX while adding new items. I will also continue to improve current workarounds to be more faithful to vanilla Minecraft while eliminating any unintended side effect.

Why Are All These Bug Fixes Limited to the Experimental Option?

A fix moves out of the experimental option into the default Vanilla RTX when it meets the following criteria:

- It must remain visually the same as vanilla Minecraft and not alter it.
- It must not cause other bugs or issues, whether ray tracing is on or off.
- It must not cause a significant performance dip.
- It must remain stable across many Minecraft updates (i.e., avoid undocumented features that could change and break).
- It must ideally remain compatible with other texture packs that modify folders other than 'root/textures/blocks', or Minecraft's featured server resources.

So far, only a few fixes fit this criteria, and even then, I'm reluctant to move them to the default Vanilla RTX. Maybe one day, when all bugs are fixed and everything is as stable as it can get, I will rename this option to "Enhanced" -- this would make it sound less scary and encourage more people to use it.

One of the ideas of Vanilla RTX was to keep it pure, changing and modifying things only out of absolute necessity. This ensures maximized compatibility -- making Vanilla RTX seamlessly integrable as a part of game's own resources that are stacked on top of each other!

This is what allows you to use a great variety of resource packs and add-ons with Vanilla RTX without seeing errors.

Should You Use the Experimental Option?

- If you're using only Vanilla RTX (with its add-ons), I highly recommend using the experimental option all the time.
- It is mostly in cases where you're using other add-ons/mods, resource packs (or forced server resource files) where things start to have a chance to break. For this reason I still recommend turning it on to see if everything works fine for you. If it does, keep using it. If something breaks, turn it off.

Generally, I would like everyone to use this option, at the same time because of potential bug risk factor, I can not allow myself to force it on for everyone by default, thus it remains optional.

Some Thoughts:
Enhancements like making villagers' glasses appear as glass and levels more 3D or adjusting entities to have emissive eyes with ray tracing are possibly the future of Vanilla RTX. There are no PBR materials for entities, but this proves it's possible to enhance Minecraft's assets for ray tracing through other means.
I always believed Mojang should have dedicated a team to creating alternative sub-assets that load only for ray tracing, but we never got that, and that's the core spirit of Vanilla RTX.

In the end, some of these fixes are made using tape and glue, or might be unpolished and experimental. They are not meant to be used alongside modded versions of Minecraft or vanilla graphics. These fixes are directed ONLY towards RTX mode of vanilla Minecraft, so if you want to use the experimental option, I highly recommend using the default game. Experimental option of Vanilla RTX is expected to work without issues only with the vanilla ray-traced game and without third-party texture packs, add-ons, or mods). Meanwhile, you may continue to use Vanilla RTX's default mode alongside anything you wish, as it is RTX in its most purest form -- truly vanilla, so to speak. Consequently any issues you may encounter are not directly tied to Vanilla RTX.

In other news, I'm aware of recent Betas and Previews and the updates they have brought to Deferred Lighting, which has caused some parts of Vanilla PBR to be in a less than ideal state.
Keep an eye out for a new update soon.
Till next time! take care.