Lost Tape Shader do Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.21.1

Lost Tape Shader

An analog-horror shaderpack for Iris and Oculus. Dense breathing fog swallows the horizon, real shadow-mapped shadows crawl across the terrain, and volumetric light shafts cut through the haze, all wrapped in VHS grain, dithering and PSX-era vertex wobble.

It is built on the classic fixed-function pipeline (GLSL 120) rather than a heavy PBR setup, so it runs fast even on weak GPUs while still hitting that Somber-style found-footage look.

Features

• Breathing fog: dense exponential fog that slowly swells and recedes, with adjustable start distance and sky swallowing
• Real shadows: distortion-mapped shadow maps including entities, with adjustable strength, softness (hard, PCF soft, very soft), resolution, distance and sun path tilt
• Volumetric light shafts: god rays marched through the shadow map. Fog darkens inside shadow columns, so bright streaks run along shadow edges
• Contact shadows (SSAO): objects cast soft screen-space shadows in corners and around block light, so torches produce visible shading
• Smart torch light: block light is exempt from the darkness curve and protects lit areas from shadow darkening, while caves stay pitch black
• Moonlight: adjustable cool night ambient that only affects sky-exposed surfaces
• PSX retro mode: vertex snapping (terrain only or including mobs), pixelation, Bayer dithering with reduced color depth
• Analog overlay: film grain, vignette, chromatic aberration, scanlines, analog flicker, VHS wobble
• Sun and moon toggles: remove them from the sky entirely while the light shafts keep falling
• 13 hand-tuned presets: every preset sets all options, so one click gives you a consistent look

Screenshots

Presets

Preset - Character

Lost Tape (default) - Balanced analog horror: fog, sickly green tint, grain, light PSX wobble Director's Cut - Dense fog, swallowed sky, dark, scanlines Verity - Very dark, desaturated, crushed blacks, VHS glitch, grim nights Backrooms - Yellow-tinted, washed-out found footage with fluorescent flicker VHS Tape - Noisy cassette: scanlines, wobble, sepia, strong chromatic aberration Camcorder '98 - Clear-ish but shaky found-footage image, brighter nights PSX Horror - Pixelated, 16 colors, hard shadows, fog glued to the camera Silent Fog - White-grey total fog, very soft shadows, intense light shafts Dead Channel - Ice-cold broadcast look: blue tint, deep dark, heavy vignette and grain Old Film - Nostalgic sepia film: desaturated, heavy grain, soft light Sunless - No sun, no moon, yet the light still falls Retro Arcade - Y2K retro without the horror: full colors, pixels, barely any fog Faint Signal - Subtle variant for normal play with a light touch of dread

Settings

All options are adjustable in game under Shader Pack Settings, grouped into five screens. English and German localization are included.

Screen - Options

Atmosphere & Fog - Fog density, fog start distance, sky fog, breathing fog, darkness, night brightness (moonlight), torch brightness, sky gloom, sun/moon toggles and brightness Shadows & Light Shafts - Shadows on/off, strength, softness, anti-flicker bias, resolution, distance, sun path tilt, light shafts, shaft strength, shadow streak contrast, quality, contact shadows (SSAO) and strength Retro / PSX - Vertex snap, snap resolution, snap on mobs, pixelation, pixel size, dithering, color depth Color Grade - Saturation, tint color (sepia, sickly green, cold blue), tint strength, contrast, faded blacks Analog Overlay - Film grain, vignette, chromatic aberration, scanlines, analog flicker, VHS wobble

Requirements

Minecraft - 1.16.5 to 26.x Shader loader - Iris (Fabric/Quilt/NeoForge) or Oculus (Forge) OptiFine - Not required, untested GPU - Anything with OpenGL 2.1+, no PBR and no heavy passes

To install, drop Lost_Tape_v#.#.zip into .minecraft/shaderpacks/ and select it under Options, Video Settings, Shader Packs.

How it works

Lost Tape uses the classic OptiFine-format pipeline (GLSL 120) that Iris and Oculus fully support. The gbuffers programs apply lightmap shaping, a gamma darkness curve with a separately sampled block-light exemption, plus optional PSX vertex snapping in clip space.

A single composite pass does most of the work. It reconstructs view positions from the depth buffer (depthtex1, so glass and water don't block shadows or fog), derives screen-space normals via dFdx and dFdy for acne-free slope-scaled shadow biasing, samples a distortion-warped shadow map, ray-marches that shadow map for volumetric light with Bayer-ordered dithering, applies SSAO and blends the breathing fog.

The final pass handles the analog grade: black lift, contrast, desaturation, tint, ordered-dither color quantization, grain, scanlines, flicker, vignette and chromatic aberration. Dimension folders give the Nether and End their own fog-only composites.