Image: Pure Xbox
Mojang this week rolled out a new update for Minecraft and while it put all the focus on its new “flat world presets” it’s also quietly released one rather big and highly anticipated experimental feature.
It’s tied to the previous ‘Vibrant Visuals’ graphics upgrade announcement that plans to transform the Bedrock Editions of Minecraft. This graphics option is now available on multiple devices including Xbox Series X|S and upgrades lighting, effects, and more.
The catch is it’s still very much in the testing stages, so this graphical experience is expected to change and improve over time.
What this means right now is you’ll need to start a world from scratch, manually activate this option in the “experimental” section (it’s a toggle setting) and then activate it again (via a toggle option) once you’ve created a world and are in-game. It also means you can’t unlock achievements while playing with this feature.
Here are the full patch notes about Vibrant Visuals, with a more official rollout to follow in the future:
Vibrant Visuals
The features, lighting, effects, and assets are still in development, so expect things to change and improve over time as we continue to iterate.
Supported devices include Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Android, iOS, and PC.
- Android: Adreno 640, Mali-G68, Mali-G77, or Xclipse 530 or higher
- iOS: A12 or M1 or higher
- PC: Running Minecraft on DX12
Our team is hard at work testing Vibrant Visuals on even more Minecraft: Bedrock Edition devices, and we hope to be able to update this list of supported devices in the future.
To use Vibrant Visuals in a World, you must enable the “Vibrant Visuals” toggle in the Experimental tab in the Create New World or Edit World screens. This will expose Vibrant Visuals as an option in the in-game Video settings Graphics Mode dropdown, which can then be selected alongside the other existing rendering modes.
Presets for choosing between “Favor Visuals” and “Favor Performance” are available in the Video Settings. Specific feature and visual settings can also be adjusted by expanding “Vibrant Visuals Options”.
Splitscreen is not supported with Vibrant Visuals and the game will switch to Fancy or Simple rendering if multiple players are joined locally.
Marketplace Add-Ons, Skins, and Persona items will work with Vibrant Visuals, however, Worlds and Texture Packs are not compatible with the new mode at this time.
We tried out Vibrant Visuals on Xbox Series X here on Pure Xbox and it looks great in-game, but on the default settings, the frame rate did have some moments.
Again, this is still in the early testing stages so don’t get too worried if you do encounter any bugs or other problems – as the experience is expected to be improved over time.
Image: Pure Xbox
So, will you be giving Vibrant Visuals a go? Let us know in the comments.
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Liam is a news writer and reviewer for Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox. He’s been writing about games for more than 15 years and is a lifelong fan of Mario and Master Chief.