Ecstatic Mod

Ecstatic is an LoD mod that allows you to play the game with insanely high render-distances with little to no impact on performance. You might be familiar with LoD mods like Distant Horizons and Voxy. Ecstatic is here to serve the same purpose - but better!

Let us take a detailed look at Ecstatic, what it has in store for us, compare against other LoD mods and also look at its limitations.

Why a New LoD Mod?

When it comes to popular LoD mods like Distant Horizons, loading distant chunks can take hours. This is because loading LoD chunks actually requires the game to fully load the distant chunks and then create their low-res variants. For this purpose, mods like Chunky are utilized. On the other hand, Ecstatic LoD rendering requires no chunk pre-generation.

How Ecstatic Works?

Ecstatic loads distant chunks in a grid based sampling technique. Basically, entire chunks are treated as a singular entity, rather than sampling multiple blocks. As seen in the image below, this causes LoD chunks to load a stretched out versions of in-game blocks. This only happens during the initial loading.

As the chunks load, these blocks turn into smoothened polygons that merge with adjacent ones to showcase smooth terrain. the below image of zoomed-in distant chunks well represents what's happening.

These polygons requires a fraction of the processing power required by other LoD mods like Distant Horizons and Voxy. From a distance, these far-away chunks are barely a dozen pixels on your screen, and their flattened low-res polygonal shape is indifferentiable from those high-detail blocks rendered by other mods like Distant Horizons.

Survival Visuals

This image shows a player flying over a thousand blocks up in the sky using an elytra - A visual fully replicable in the survival game. Do the far away chunks look low-res and ugly?

Clearly, the answer is no. The high render-distance makes flying a visually mesmerizing act.

Shader Support

In all the above images, one thing can be noticed - they lack shaders. Shader support is something other LoD mods like Distant Horizons and Voxy natively have. The current versions of Ecstatic, at the time of writing this article, do no include shader support. The developer has shown plans for adding shader support soon. And when they do, we will make sure to update it here!

Custom Terrain Generation

This screenshot was taken from around 5000 blocks up in the air. The player is currently at a Y-level of 5000+. You can see entire biomes, biome boundaries, and more. In the vanilla game, the terrain would not even load from this height.

The best part is that all of Ecstatic's features are fully compatible with mods or datapacks that introduce custom terrain generation, as long as they do not introduce new biomes. Terrain generators like Tectonic are fully compatible.

Mod Settings

Ecstatic comes with its own settings that you can tweak to adjust several parameters of the LoD chunks and their rendering. Settings like Opaque Water makes water in the LoD chunks render as a blue solid, further improving performance.

Conclusion

Overall, Ecstatic stands out as a promising game-changer for players seeking massive render distances without sacrificing performance or sinking hours into chunk pre-generation. While the current lack of shader support and minor initial block stretching are notable drawbacks, its clever grid-based polygonal sampling delivers remarkably crisp visuals from a distance at a fraction of the processing cost. If you want breathtaking survival landscapes and smooth high-altitude flight without hardware strain, Ecstatic is well worth adding to your mod list - especially as future updates bring native shader compatibility.