kristitrnka/spectra

Spectra is an experimental modification for Minecraft that backports the modern Iris and Oculus shader system to an older version of the game, Minecraft Forge 1.12.2. Iris and Oculus are tools that let players apply shader packs to change how lighting, shadows, water, and atmosphere look in Minecraft. Those tools only officially support recent versions of Minecraft, so Spectra aims to bring the same capability to the 1.12.2 version that many popular modpacks still depend on. The project is in early alpha and is not yet stable. The shader selection interface is unfinished, some shader packs may fail to load correctly, and support for macOS on Apple Silicon hardware is listed as broken due to OpenGL limitations. Windows and Linux are marked as experimental. The mod requires two other mods alongside it, Vintagium and MixinBooter, and it does not work with OptiFine installed. Installing it follows the same process as any Forge mod: install Minecraft Forge 1.12.2, install the two required dependency mods, and place the Spectra jar file in your Minecraft mods folder. Building from source requires Java and Gradle and produces the compiled jar with a single command. The project was built on top of the Oculus codebase, which itself derives from Iris. The README credits the Iris Shaders team, Oculus developers, and several individual contributors. Spectra is open-source, but the README does not state a separate license for this project, only asking users to respect the original project licenses.