Stars are almost invisible at night

[echo-4199]

I'm on Minecraft Neoforge 1.21.1. The mods used in the Sreenshots are:

• sodium-neoforge-0.8.12+mc1.21.1
• iris-neoforge-1.8.14-beta.1+mc1.21.1
• immersiveoverlays-1.7.2+1.21.1-neoforge

I also tested it with sodium 0.6.13 and iris 1.8.12. With exactly the same Problem.

Night Sky with almost no visible Stars, Nightbrightness 0.2:

Sky at Evening with much more visible Stars, Nightbrightness 0.2:

Night Sky with Shader turned off, normal visible Stars again:

I forgot to mention the Shader used ist MakeUp-UltraFast-9.5c

[javiergcim]

I'm sorry, but your issue doesn't seem to be directly related to the shader. Judging by the images you've provided, the color range on your system appears to be altered, and it's not displaying the darkest colors, which are being crushed directly to black.

Is there anything outside of the shader that you're using that might be trying to adjust the color space or color range? Your image looks as if a PC-range image were being displayed on a TV, where the darkest colors are crushed to black and the brightest colors are clipped to white.

Also, keep in mind that you're using unofficial forks of Sodium and Iris, which don't necessarily work the same way and may not include the latest fixes.

In this image, it looks the way it actually is. If you still see it as "black" even in this screenshot, then it's an issue with your system's calibration/display.

[echo-4199]

I can assure you that I’ve never altered my color range, nor do I have any applications that could do so. The only thing I have enabled is the eye-care mode on my monitor, which tints everything a little yellowish to reduce blue light—but that wouldn't show up in screenshots anyway.

I’m also pretty sure Sodium and Iris are not unofficial forks, but the official versions for NeoForge 1.21.1. There is no indication that they are forks. Furthermore, Sodium 0.8.12 was updated just two weeks ago, and Iris was updated to support this version of Sodium about a month ago. Both mods are fully up to date for NeoForge 1.21.1. I think you might be confusing Forge with NeoForge here.

Looking at your screenshot, I can see the stars. They might not be as bright as I'd like them to be, but they are perfectly visible to me. I can also tell that your night brightness is set to default (which is high) or even higher. This issue only occurs on low night brightness settings—in my case, 0.2 or lower.

I asked an AI to help fix this issue, and it actually worked. I'm not a programmer, but from what I understand, the sky brightness and star brightness are coupled together. So when you lower the night brightness, it automatically lowers the star brightness as well. Decoupling them solves the issue (at least for me).

Here is the AI's implementation:
In the directory shaders/common/skybasic_fragment.glsl it changed the lines from this:

#if MC_VERSION >= 11604
blockColor.rgba = vec4(texture2D(gaux4, gl_FragCoord.xy * vec2(pixelSizeX, pixelSizeY)).rgb, clamp(star_data.a * 2.0, 0.0, 1.0));
#endif

to this:

#if MC_VERSION >= 11604
// Keep the original sky/cloud color and add stars independently.
// This prevents NIGHT_BRIGHT from suppressing the stars.
vec3 skyColor = texture2D(gaux4, gl_FragCoord.xy * vec2(pixelSizeX, pixelSizeY)).rgb;
vec3 starColor = vec3(star_data.a * 0.75);
blockColor.rgb = min(skyColor + starColor, vec3(1.0));
blockColor.a = 1.0;
#endif

and now my nightsky looks like this:

For me, it's perfect now, which is why I'm pretty sure this is related to the shader.

I also wanted to say that your shader is amazing! It’s the only one that still looks great while running at 120 FPS and offering good mod compatibility. This issue was the only thing that really bothered me.