Skip to content

Zephyr Starlight Shaders for Minecraft 1.21.1, 1.21

Experimental real-time path traced shaderpack for Minecraft

views
41 views
Updated
Updated 04.09.2026
1 / 2

About Zephyr Starlight shaders

⚠️ Disclaimer: This shaderpack is an early work-in-progress so bugs, missing features and performance issues are to be expected.

Zephyr Starlight — screenshot 3

Features

  • Accurate ray-geometry intersection
  • Path traced diffuse, reflections and sun shadows
  • Temporal anti-aliasing and upsampling
  • Normal & specular mapping support
  • Physically based sky rendering
  • Hillaire multi-scattering approximation
  • Sparse irradiance cache for diffuse multi-bounce approximation
  • Reflection motion vector calculation (no TAA ghosting on reflections)
  • Spatiotemporal denoising
  • Camera effects: motion blur & depth of field
  • Post-processing: auto exposure & chromatic aberration
Zephyr Starlight — screenshot 4

Compatibility / Mod Support

  • GPUs: NVIDIA, AMD
  • Minecraft - version 1.21 and above
  • Iris - version 1.8.0 and above
  • Optifine - not supported
  • Distant Horizons/Voxy - not supported (planned)
  • OrthoCamera - supported but still broken in a few cases
  • macOS - not supported

Performance Tips

  • Sample count: This directly affects the quality of the lighting. Higher sample counts show less noise and more detailed lighting/reflections at the cost of performance. Keep this at 1 for the best performance.
  • Diffuse Lighting > Denoising Passes: The amount of passes used for diffuse lighting denoising. Even though not as high as sample count, this has a performance impact too. You can still get decent lighting with just 6 passes most of the time, but a pass count of 8 is recommended for the best lighting. You can set this to 0 if you're fine with the noise.
  • If you are in a completely closed room with no outdoor light entering it, set Shadow Samples to 0. This will disable sunlight.
  • Irradiance Cache > Update Interval: The maximum amount of frames that are allowed to pass between updates of the same part of the irradiance cache. Lower values cost more performance, but result in more responsive lighting and less noise in reflections.

How to install Zephyr Starlight

With Millida Launcher

  1. Install Millida Launcher

    The launcher is free: download it at millida.net/launcher and sign in with any nickname.

  2. Click “Install” on this page

    The launcher opens and installs the shaders for Minecraft 1.21–1.21.11 automatically.

  3. Launch the game

    A profile with it appears in the launcher: click “Play”.

Manually

  1. Install Iris

    Without a shader mod the game cannot see shaders. Install it for the same Minecraft version.

  2. Download the shader archive

    Pick the file zephyr-starlight-v0.2.2a-hotfix1.zip (4.0 MB) and do not unpack it.

  3. Put it in the shaderpacks folder

    “Options”, then “Video Settings”, then “Shader Packs”, then “Open Shader Pack Folder”, and drag the archive there.

  4. Select the shaders

    In the same window, click the pack name and “Apply”.

Versions

With dependencies

MinecraftLoaderFileActions
1.21.11Iris1.21.114 MB
1.21Iris1.214 MB

FAQ

Which Minecraft versions does Zephyr Starlight work on?

There are files for 1.21–1.21.11, 12 versions in total. The newest is 1.21.11.

What do I need to run Zephyr Starlight?

Shaders are loaded through Iris: without it the game cannot see them.

Where can I download Zephyr Starlight safely?

On this page: the file zephyr-starlight-v0.2.2a-hotfix1.zip (4.0 MB) is stored on Millida’s server, with no link shorteners. SHA-1 checksum: 0ff701ceac5f6b1b2584894fa21638273442d740.

Reviews

Be the first to rate Zephyr Starlight

Comments 0

Sign in to commentSign in

Similar shaders

All shaders

More on this

Author: Kirilpro6284License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

Are you the author? Contact us — we will take it down within 48 hours.