How to Add Distant Horizons to any Modpack
This is Distant Horizons on the Valhelsia 6 Mod Pack.
You may have seen videos of people flying around in amazing landscapes and seemingly infinite viewing distances. That's the Distant Horizons mod. Distant Horizons isn't yet included in many mod packs yet, but that doesn't need to stop you from using it, like I did her with Valhelsia 6.
Distant Horizons is an amazing mod that provides virtually unlimited simplified viewing distance to Minecraft. You can have lower render distances to improve performance but still view 128 (or more) chunks in the distance!
In this post I'm going to show you how easy it is to install Distant Horizons on top of the modpack you're playing.
Even if you're playing on a server, it works on the client only, so you can just go ahead and add it to your own client. There's a server-side version in the works though.
Distant Horizon's design allows it to work with just about any mod in Minecraft. Therefore, it should be able to be added to any Minecraft mod pack, as long as it's on a supported version of Minecraft! There are some exceptions to this and in fact, I want to say up front that it won't necessarily work on any given mod pack, but you can certainly try!
Video Version of this post
What versions of Minecraft can you Play Distant Horizons On?
The following versions of Minecraft and Mod Loaders are currently supported by Distant Horizons, version Alpha 2.1.2. I'll try to keep this list updated, but you can always check the latest versions available on the Distant Horizons Curseforge or the Distant Horizons Modrinth pages.
- Minecraft 1.21 - Neoforge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.20.6 - Neoforge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.20.4 - Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.20.2 - Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.20.1 - Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.19.4 Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.19.2 Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.18.2 Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.17.1 Forge and Fabric
- Minecraft 1.16.5 Forge and Fabric
If your mod pack is built on one of those versions of Minecraft, you may be able to get it running! Give it a try!
Let's go through how to add it to your mod pack using three different methods, Prism Launcher, Curseforge Launcher, and Manually.
Does Distant Horizons work with Shaders?
Many mod packs come with Shaders installed, and therefore mods like Iris, Sodium or Embeddium and other supporting mods. In short, yes. Distant Horizons will work but only in certain cases where they have the correct versions of shader rendering mods installed, and shaders that have been developed (updated) with Distant Horizons support in mind.
Optifine: Distant Horizons partially works with forward rendered shaders.
Iris (and equivalent ports like Oculus): Distant Horizons 2.1.0+ only works with Iris 1.7+ and only with shaders built with DH support in mind. Iris version 1.7 is only available on 1.20.1+ and Oculus 1.7 (Forge Iris port) is only available on 1.20.1.
There is a NeoForge version of Iris coming. It's in development, and I've tested it to get DH + Shaders working in 1.21!
In short, if you want to use Shaders, it's best to stick to more recent versions of Minecraft, 1.20.1 and later.
Some shader packs that work well with Distant Horizons, though they must be developed with Distant Horizons in mind. It's best to use the latest versions:
- Complementary Reimagined v5.2.2+
- Complementary Unbound v5.2.2+
- BSL v8.2.09
- Bliss (v2.0.2 doesn't work. Only the latest development version works, which you can download from here. Click the green code button, then download the zip. Install that into the shaders)
If you're using a shader pack and the DH LODs aren't loading, you may have an older, or incompatible shader pack. Try changing it or updating.
Using Prism to install Distant Horizons on a Modpack
If you have a mod pack installed on Prism, just click on the instance and then click Edit. Here's using All The Mods 10 as an example.
If you're not certain about the version of your modpack, click on "Version" to see the version of Minecraft you're running, and which Modloader. Make sure these are included in the versions above. Here we can see that ATM10 is Minecraft 1.21 and NeoForge.
Next, click on Mods and then Download Mod
On the window that pops up, you can select either Modrinth or Curseforge, then search for Distant Horizons. Click on it so it's highlighted, then "Select Mod for Download". Then click Review and Confirm.
Note: If Distant Horizons does not come up in the search, that's an indication that your modpack isn't on a compatible version. Check the version compatibility list above.
Click OK on the next popup
And that's it! You can now launch the instance and Distant Horizons should load with your modpack!
At this point it may or may not work. You may get crashes or errors. Not all mod packs will work and all you can do is test it out. If you do get errors, see the troubleshooting section below.
Using Curseforge to install Distant Horizons on a Modpack
If your mod pack is installed on Curseforge, follow these instructions. I'm going use Better MC [FABRIC] which is a 1.20.1 modpack on Fabric.
Assuming you've already got your mod pack installed, right click on the instance card in Curseforge. If you don't see an option for "Add More Content" and instead you see "Change Version", click on Profile Options. Otherwise skip ahead.
In Profile Options, select "Allow content management for this profile" and click Done.
Now when you right click on the instance you should see "Add More Content". Click that.
On the next screen type distant horizons in the search box and you will see Distant Horizons appear.
It will download the mod (and any dependencies, which there shouldn't be any) and will say "Installed". Go back to the My Modpacks tab and click Play on your edited Mod pack.
Better MC [Fabric] Works! In the Options, you can see the Distant Horizons button in the upper left.
Again, at this point your particular mod pack may or may not work. You may get crashes or errors. Not all mod packs will work and all you can do is test it out. If you do get errors, see the troubleshooting section below for ideas.
Note: You won't be able to change the version on a pack that has the custom content enabled. If you want to update to a new version, you'll need to reverse the process to get the "Change version" button back.
Manual Method (not recommended) to install Distant Horizons on a Modpack
You can also manually install the Distant Horizons mod. I'm not sure why you would do this since most launchers support some sort of searching and adding mods to mod packs, but for the sake of being thorough, here's how.
Go to the Distant Horizons page on Curseforge.com or Modrinth.com and download the version you need. The advantage to doing it the other two ways is you don't need to figure out which version you need. Since you're here, you must know enough to get the right one, so I'll leave that to you!
find the version you want and then click the three dot menu and "Download file". That file will go into your Downloads folder.
Open the folder containing your modpack instance. Most launchers have a way to open this folder. In Curseforge you right click and select "Open folder".
Drag the mod from your downloads folder into this mods folder and start your game how you normally do. That's it!
How do you know Distant Horizon is installed and running?
The first way is that you'll see the Distant Horizons configuration menu in the Options screen.
The second way is to load a world. Your computer will tell you with it's very loud fans going at 100% while Distant Horizons makes your computer work like it's never worked before. You'll also start to see chunks generate outside of the render distance. They'll be lower resolution the farther out you go. It can take several minutes, even tens of minutes to generate the world around you. But soon it will become obvious! You'll see structures and mountains way off in the distance, farther than you've ever seen before in Minecraft!
Troubleshooting
If Distant Horizons doesn't render it's LODs, that may mean there's an incompatibility with a mod that's in the mod pack you're playing. Alex's Caves is one such mod. There are several others that are considered "incompatible", which is surely a moving target.
If things aren't working, and there's no error messages, like you have incompatible shader pack installed, you'll need to start removing mods or updating mods to see what's breaking it. That's a long tedious process!
Here are some specific examples...
How to use Distant Horizons with Alex's Caves
The Alex's Caves mod is a known issue with Distant Horizons. It may be fixed by the time you read this, but if Distant Horizons loads just fine, but doesn't render any of it's LOD chunks outside of your render distance, that may be this issue if you have Alex's Caves in your mod pack.
Edit alexcaves-client.toml, found in the minecraft/config folder and change the biome_ambient_light_coloring setting to false
How to Fix Incompatible Mods
In some mod packs, you may see an error like this. Fabric is much friendlier than Forge in this regard.
I'm playing on an older version of Prominence II and there are lots of mods that can be updated. Generally, this isn't a great idea as it may further break a mod pack. If you can, update to the latest version of the mod pack, which may install a newer version of Iris and supporting mods.
I'm going to take my chances here and just update Iris.
After updating Iris, trying again... And Sodium is also outdated. We're going down a slippery slope here, but I'm going to also update sodium as well and try again.
OK, we're going from bad to worse.
I'm all in now and am going to try manually updating these mods as well. This is just getting silly. I should just update the entire pack. But this is for science! One more update, Moonlight Lib was needed by Supplementaries and... it didn't work.
I installed a new version of Prominence II RPG, and it didn't work either. There were still version incompatibilities with various mods. At this point I gave up.
I installed the latest version of Prominence II RPG, and still that didn't work. I've seen reports on their Discord of people getting it working, but I'm going to give up. Prominence II RPG has over 450 mods in it, and it's a massive pack to try to squeeze a new mod into. If I ever get it working, I'll update this post.
What Mod Packs does Distant Horizons work with?
This is a moving target, but I'll start to collect my notes on the various mod packs that I've tried out with Distant Horizons. I don't know of any mod packs currently published with Distant Horizons at this point.
How to Add Distant Horizons to Valhelsia 6?
Valhelsia 6 has Alex's Caves and you need to follow the instructions above to modify the config file for Alex's Caves. You also need to update the shaders.
How to Add Distant Horizons to Prominence II RPG?
As you can see in the above troubleshooting section, I was unable to get it running on versions 2.7.7 or 2.8.7 of Prominence II RPG. I have seen notes in their Discord server where people were able to do it by updating individual client mods.
How to add Distant Horizons to Better MC Fabric BMC2 1.20.1
As of the current version, just add Distant Horizons using the instructions above. It does have shader support built in, but the shaders need to be updated to later versions.
How to add Distant Horizons to Better MC Fabric BMC3 1.21
As of the current version, just add Distant Horizons using the instructions above!. It just works. It does have shader support built in with a few shaders installed. The Complementary shaders that are installed work great with DH. Pastel Shaders does not.
How to Add Distant Horizons to All the Mods 9 (ATM9)
Does ATM9 Work with Distant Horizons? Yes!
As of the current version, just add Distant Horizons using the instructions above!. It just works. It does have shader support built in with a few shaders installed. The Complementary shaders that are installed don't work. You'll need to update them to 5.2.2 or later. MakeUp shader doesn't appear to work. You can install BSL, photon, or the latest dev version of Bliss (see above).
Here's ATM9 with BSL 8.2.09!
How to Add Distant Horizons to Big Chad Guys Plus
Does Distant Horizons work with Big Chad Guys Plus w/Cobblemon? Yes! with modifications.
Getting Distant Horizons running requires updating a bunch of mods, and removing others. Updating Iris kicks off a big chain of compatibility issues, requiring updates and removals. In the end, I got it working with the following changes.
My process is to use Prism to add the updated versions, and disable the older versions so I can go back.
I updated these mods, and of course added Distant Horizons.
I removed these mods, some replaced by the above
I also had to update Complementary Reimagined to v5.22. You can of course add any shaders you want.
Here is BigChadGuys Plus w/Cobblemon running with Complementary Reimagined 5.2.2
How to Add Distant Horizons to Vault Hunters 3
Does Distant Horizons work with Vault Hunters 3? Yes! Maybe not with shaders though.
Just add the correct 1.18.2 version of Distant Horizons to the mods folder, or by using your launcher to add it. Since Vault Hunters is a 1.18.2 Forge mod pack, that older version of Iris isn't compatible with DH. You need to use Optifine and any forward rendering shader pack. I haven't tried shaders with it. But here's a Vault Hunter's 3 world with a render distance of 6!