Ticks Mod

Ticks is a mod that makes the day-night transitions in your game look a lot smoother, especially when time is skipped in large steps.

Imagine it is day-time and your use the /time set night command. What happens? The sky appears to be day, and then night in an instant. The time addition is done instantaneously with no proper transition. This is what the Ticks mod addresses.

As you can see in the gif, the time does not instantaneously change upon using the time command. Instead the skybox rotates at a higher speed, until the correct time is reached. This happens with a smooth out/in animation.

Features like this are very minimal, but for someone who frequently uses the time command for whatever purpose, this small addition changes the way how time change is perceived. Basically, you get to visualize how much the skybox rotates at a given time adjustment. Simple, yet cool!

By editing the transitionTimeMillis value in the .minecraft/config folder, you can adjust how long the transition lasts. Setting a higher value means that transition occurs along a longer time, making the change more visible.

Furthermore, increasing the game tickrate makes the in-game activities proceed faster. In the vanilla game, the sky rotation animation that thus occurs will appear stuttered, but with Ticks installed, these animations are way smoother.

Final Verdict

As mentioned earlier, the Ticks mod makes a small change. But for those that pay attention to detail, this small change can be quite an improvement. Personally, I would suggest making the clouds move along with the change in the sky-box, as this too, is a phenomenon affected by time.