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PayPalWork continues for the Vibrant Visuals update to come to Minecraft Java, and as part of that they're switching the rendering from OpenGL to Vulkan.
Announced today (February 18th) by Mojang developers, it's a huge change for such a game and will take time - but it will be worth it in the end so they can take advantage of all the modern features available for both visual improvements and better performance.
They note clearly that their aim is to "keep Minecraft: Java Edition playable for almost any PC-operating system, including macOS and Linux". For the macOS side of things, they'll use a translation layer since Apple don't support Vulkan directly (they made their own API with Metal).
For modders, they're suggesting they start making preparations to move away from OpenGL
Switching from OpenGL to Vulkan will have an impact on the mods that currently use OpenGL for rendering, and we anticipate that updating from OpenGL to Vulkan will take modders more effort than the updates you undertake for each of our releases.
To start with, we recommend our modding community look at moving away from OpenGL usage. We encourage authors to try to reuse as much of the internal rendering APIs as possible, to make this transition as easy as possible. If that is not sufficient for your needs, then come and talk to us!
It does mean that players on really old devices that don't support Vulkan will be left out, but Vulkan has been supported going back to some pretty old GPUs. You've got time though, as they'll be rolling out Vulkan alongside OpenGL in snapshots (development releases) "sometime over the summer". You'll be able to toggle between them during the testing period until Mojang believe it's ready. OpenGL will be entirely removed eventually once they're happy with performance and stability.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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AllyTheProtogen 6 hours ago
Persephone the Sheep 6 hours ago
Part of me is like "man now minecraft can't run on anything" but also vulkan support have been here since 600 series nvidia with kepler and HD 7000 series AMD with GCN 1 both from 2012 so as long as your gpu isn't more then 14 years old you can still play as long as they don't go past vulkan 1.2 because of keplerVulkan support on those GPUs tends to be pretty broken, to the point most developers don't bother supporting them anymore. (Kepler GPUs also only ever supported Vulkan on desktops, not laptops.)
You generally need a Maxwell or Polaris GPU for Vulkan support to work acceptably in 2026. In practice, you might want to require Vulkan 1.3 on desktop to avoid the use of very outdated drivers, with the exception of some not-so-old Intel IGPs that only go up to Vulkan 1.2.
Even DXVK mandates Vulkan 1.3 support nowadays.
Last edited by Calinou on 18 Feb 2026 at 10:31 pm UTC
Caldathras 2 hours ago
Quoting: Persephone the SheepPart of me is like "man now minecraft can't run on anything" but also vulkan support have been here since 600 series nvidia with kepler and HD 7000 series AMD with GCN 1 both from 2012 so as long as your gpu isn't more then 14 years old you can still play as long as they don't go past vulkan 1.2 because of kepler. I'm not sure about the laptop side with intel so that concerns me. I don't know how kepler does with vulkan I know it does terribly with DX12 my GT 640 is dead so I can't check for myself. I just hope this doesn't effect too many people.My old laptop's GT 730M dGPU can handle DX10 in Windows but it is limited to Vulkan 1.2 in Linux. The Intel iGPU only supports Vulkan 1.0.
On the flipside, my newer laptop with the MX150 dGPU can handle DX12 and Vulkan 1.4, as can the Intel iGPU. The MX150 is a Pascal series GPU.
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