New Features

• Iris 1.8+
  • Iris 1.8 removed support for negative block IDs, which were previously used by RenderPearl
  • The update also added additional shadow programs and the ability to disable sky and star rendering, which are now used by RenderPearl to improve performance
• Light index-based lighting now enabled by default!
  • Due to significant improvements to the structure of the shader pack as well as the lighting calculations and culling, both Colored Light and Glossy Reflections are now enabled by default
• Implicit surface smoothness & improved specular map support
  • When specular maps are disabled, smoothness values are automatically generated based on surface luminocity. More customization of this feature will be available in the future
• Completely custom sky rendering
  • Significantly faster than the Vanilla Minecraft sky
  • Still slightly unstable and may not look right all the time, which is part of why this release is marked as a beta
• Hand Light option

Improvements

• Compute-based post-processing and deferred rendering
  • This significantly improves performance in many situations due to less unneccessary processing, fast shared memory and asynchronous processing
  • Translucent terrain is still forward rendered using a technique similar to that in RenderPearl v2.1, though this is subject to change
• Fog can now be disabled (requested by Baldous_)

Fixed Issues

• Enchantment glint is broken in the nether (reported by Stonease)
• Light Level Visualization is incompatible with some drivers (reported by Paragoumba)