Freshly unveiled at Minecraft Live, a significant graphical update dubbed "Vibrant Visuals" is set to transform the visual experience of Minecraft. This update will first roll out to devices compatible with Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, with plans to extend it to Minecraft: Java Edition later. The enhancements include directional lighting, volumetric fog, pixelated shadows, and shimmering water, all of which enrich the game's aesthetics without altering its core gameplay mechanics. For instance, while the new visual shadows enhance the look, they won't change light levels or affect where hostile mobs spawn.
Minecraft Vibrant Visuals Comparison Screenshots
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Players will have the flexibility to switch between the new and classic visuals with a simple button press, catering to those who prefer the traditional Minecraft look.
Agnes Larsson, the game director of Minecraft Vanilla, shared that the initial beta release is slated for a few months from now. “There's a lot of testing going on now to try to get it to as many platforms as possible, but it's important that it's high quality and good performance. So yeah, this truly is the start of the journey,” she explained.
Maddie Psenka, senior product manager on Vibrant Visuals, provided deeper insights into the development process: “I think it's been a journey for a while. Something that we've wanted to do for the game. There has been past projects that we've had around graphics and wanting to do this kind of update, but I think this time we really wanted to take the space to build the foundations for this new mode. Not getting too ahead of things, making sure things were cross-platform and were really strong so we could build on top of that and release that with the community. We really wanted to give players what they wanted. We know this kind of visual update is something that they've been asking for a bit.”
Psenka added, “We weren't going as fast as we could on PC to make things look really great and call it done. We wanted to make sure it worked on mobile, worked on console. There's a lot of complexities of course, as you can imagine when jumping across platforms and the different backends there. But it's something that we really took our time with to put something forward that we really are proud of.”
This marks the beginning of a new graphical journey for Minecraft, one that will evolve over the coming years, balancing the classic Minecraft aesthetic with the desire for a more modern look.Jasper Boerstra, Minecraft’s art director, emphasized the ongoing nature of these enhancements: “As Minecraft continues to evolve, I think we'll find new things to add to the graphics over the years, right? I mean, we're always in active development and we're here to stay for a long time. Minecraft is always going on. It's more relevant than ever. So yeah, I think these graphic updates, whenever something comes up or we get new ideas or there's player feedback and forth, we might look into even more features.”
Vibrant Visuals will be a free update, reflecting Mojang's commitment to enhancing the game without heavily monetizing it further. This approach aligns with their philosophy of continually improving the original game rather than creating a "Minecraft 2" or leveraging generative AI technology. Despite being 15 years old, Minecraft shows no signs of slowing down.
To learn more about what's on the horizon for Minecraft, be sure to check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025.
