2026-09-28 - Nether lava shine reliability fix
- Added a Nether-only lava-color glow to the final pass, independent of profile bloom and shadow quality.
- Matched lava-glow strength across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra so all four definitions retain the shine.

2026-09-28 - Nether per-profile glow and ambience tuning
- Mapped the Low, Medium, High, and Ultra Nether settings to the four supplied captures, from the brightest Low look to the restrained Ultra look.
- Added warm lava-lit fog and screen glow that stays active in every profile instead of inheriting each profile's general bloom value.
- Kept explicit lava emission, per-profile surface brightness and color, and Nether-only adjustments.

2026-09-27 - End sky definition pass
- Added a user-adjustable End-only contrast option and applied it to the panorama in both the sky and composite/fog paths.
- Kept the existing panorama sampling count and filtering, so this adds no texture-sampling cost.

2026-09-27 - End horizon line blend fix
- Replaced the End's fixed purple distance-fog tint with the panorama color at the same view direction, so distant island edges fade into the sky without a contrasting stripe.
- Carried the sky contrast curve into fogged horizon pixels and feathered the reference-to-nebula transition.

2026-09-27 - Galaxy-inspired End panorama
- Replaced the End sky image with a sky-only panorama based on the clearer supplied black-hole and starfield reference.
- Kept the image full-dome, with a wrapped horizontal seam and a dark starfield fade beneath the disk.

2026-09-27 - End island shadow balance
- Reduced shadow strength on End terrain to 35% of the selected profile value, preserving form while preventing overly dark island patches.

2026-09-27 - End haze and galaxy clarity adjustment
- Reduced distance fog on End terrain and lowered Distant Horizons haze in the End only.
- Added an End-sky contrast curve after post-processing to restore black-hole contrast and preserve nebula/star detail.

2026-09-27 - End dimension shader routing repair
- Mirrored the shader programs into the legacy world1 End directory; Iris treats this directory as the End's shader set instead of falling back to the root programs.
- Added the matching sky vertex stage and an End-only composite that replaces uncovered background pixels with the panorama.
- Kept the existing terrain, entity, water, distant-horizon, and final shader stages available in the End.

2026-09-27 - Full-screen End sky coverage correction
- Added a depth-tested composite sky replacement so uncovered End background pixels receive the panorama even when sky geometry does not cover the clear-color area.
- Preserved distant-horizon terrain by skipping replacement wherever Distant Horizons has actual depth.

2026-09-27 - End sky coverage and orientation fix
- Added an Iris world1 sky override so the panorama replaces the entire End sky instead of depending on a dimension uniform in the shared sky shader.
- Rotated the panorama to move the reference black-hole scene into the captured forward view and filled its lower hemisphere with a violet nebula and stars.

2026-09-27 - Galaxy-inspired End panorama
- Replaced the End sky image with a sky-only panorama based on the clearer supplied black-hole and starfield reference.
- Kept the image full-dome, with a wrapped horizontal seam and a dark starfield fade beneath the disk.

Aether Realism 26.1.2 — compile compatibility fix

- Removed frameTimeCounter dependency from terrain fragment shadow filtering.
- Kept foliage animation time only in the terrain vertex stage, where it is explicitly declared.
- No terrain_solid or terrain_cutout overrides were added.

2026-09-27 - DH/water correction
- Removed secondary relighting from dh_terrain to preserve native DH LOD appearance.
- Initial water implementation did not yet include opaque-depth occlusion.
- Kept water transparency and restrained refraction-like highlights.

2026-09-27 - Water/DH stability pass
- Initial stability pass avoided sampling depthtex1 in gbuffers_water; this was superseded by opaque-depth checks after the deferred stage.
- DH water now uses dhProjection, matching the dedicated DH render space.
- DH water relies on Iris's dedicated dh_water program routing rather than a fragment material-ID discard, which could leave holes in the LOD surface.

2026-09-27 - Water edge and lightning balance
- Kept the original water-bed transparency and increased surface reflection/coverage only at grazing angles in vanilla and DH water.
- Removed the extra near-2x brightness boost from lightning bolts and reduced the global thunder flash.

2026-09-27 - Opaque-depth water occlusion
- Water fragments now compare against opaque vanilla and DH depth after the opaque passes have completed.
- Depths from the two projection ranges are reconstructed into view space before comparison, preventing DH water from drawing through nearer terrain.

2026-09-27 - Cloud and performance pass
- Added sunlit cloud tops, cooler shaded cloud faces, and view-angle density for more depth without raymarching.
- Fixed DH cloud depth sampling to use screen coordinates instead of cloud texture coordinates.
- Reduced the default shadow filter from nine taps to five, lowered the shadow map resolution to 2048, and reduced bloom sampling from six taps to four.

2026-09-27 - High/Ultra sunset sky options
- Added warm sunset cloud shading, a soft sun halo, and horizon haze inspired by the supplied reference images.
- Added a Sky settings page for quality, cloud density/softness/puffiness/warmth, and sun glow/size/warmth.
- Kept the added sky work to per-pixel shader math, with no cloud raymarching or added cloud texture samples.
- Enabled the effect in the High and Ultra profiles; Low and Medium keep it disabled.

2026-09-27 - End sky and entity texture repair
- Fixed entity overlay handling so the entity tint blends with the sampled texture without multiplying away its color or alpha.
- Added a full-dome End panorama based on the supplied black-hole reference image, with screenshot UI removed.
- Added adjustable End panorama brightness; the texture is bilinearly filtered and wraps horizontally.
