Hysteria Shaders
by ElocinDev
A high-end voxel-based path-tracing shader that combines multiple cutting-edge rendering techniques for near-photorealistic results.
What Hysteria Shaders looks like in-game
This list runs two lighting systems at once, which is unusual and is where the eight-gigabyte requirement comes from. Voxel GI carries light around corners and path tracing resolves it accurately, and each tile below is showing you one of them or the interaction between them. The caustics are the clearest evidence that the two are genuinely connected rather than layered: a painted approximation would not track the water surface the way this does.
Hysteria Shaders ships 8 headline effects. None of these tiles was drawn for this page. 7 of the 7 are crops from Hysteria Shaders' own published screenshots: for each effect we picked the frame where it reads most clearly and cut out the region where it is actually happening. The complete frame opening this page is from that same set, so any detail here can be returned to the scene it came from.
Voxel GI
The world is sampled as voxels so bounced light and colour bleed resolve around corners, and running this alongside path tracing is what costs 8 GB.
PBR
Physically based materials give every surface its own roughness and metalness, which traced and voxel light both have something real to respond to.
Volumetric clouds
Clouds carry genuine volume, lit by the same system as the rest of the scene, so the shade beneath them falls where the light says it should.
Ray-traced reflections
Reflections are traced rather than read from the screen, holding at grazing angles and continuing to show what the camera has moved past.
Bloom
A measured glow around bright sources, kept in proportion so it does not flatten the contrast the traced lighting has worked to produce.
Caustics
Light bending through water lands below as a moving net of brightness, and because it comes out of the traced system it tracks the surface exactly.
Colored lighting
Each light source carries its own colour into the voxel model, so a torch around a corner still tints the corridor it cannot be seen from.
Compatibility
What you need to run Hysteria Shaders
Baseline card: RTX 3070 / RX 6800. Meters are scaled against a 12 GB VRAM / 32 GB RAM reference build.
An overview of Hysteria Shaders
Hysteria Shaders sits at the top of what a Minecraft shader currently asks for, matching Continuum at an RTX 3070 or RX 6800 with 8 GB of VRAM. Unlike Continuum it is written for Iris and against the newest capabilities the loader offers, which is why its supported range is only Minecraft 1.20 through 1.21.3.
Voxel-based global illumination and path tracing run together here rather than one standing in for the other, so light is both traced through the scene and informed by a voxel model of the world around it. Caustics fall out of that same system: light bending through water lands on the surfaces below as a moving net that tracks the surface rather than a texture pretending to.
It can be unstable, which is normal this far forward, and driver version and mod combination matter more than they would under a medium-tier pack. Next to Rethinking Voxels it is the heavier of the two voxel shaders here, asking two extra gigabytes and adding path tracing and caustics on top, with the picture to match.
Hysteria Shaders against vanilla Minecraft
Hysteria changes the lighting with two systems running at once. The first two entries are separate systems, and they run at the same time. Textures are untouched, and the following is what the renderer starts doing:
- Voxel GI: the world is sampled as voxels so bounced light and colour bleed resolve around corners rather than only where the camera looks.
- Path tracing: light is traced surface to surface on top of the voxel model, so the two systems inform each other rather than substitute.
- PBR: physically based materials give every surface its own roughness and metalness for both lighting systems to respond to.
- Volumetric clouds: clouds carry genuine volume lit by the same system as the rest of the scene, so their shade falls where the light says.
- Ray-traced reflections: reflections are traced rather than read from the screen, holding at grazing angles and past what the camera has left.
- Bloom: a measured glow around bright sources, kept in proportion so it does not flatten the contrast the traced lighting produces.
- Overall direction: the heaviest voxel shader listed here, aimed at people who want to see what the technology currently does.
Strengths and trade-offs
| Strength | Incredible visual quality |
| Strength | Advanced voxel GI |
| Strength | Cutting-edge rendering |
| Strength | Beautiful caustics |
| Trade-off | Extremely demanding |
| Trade-off | Iris only |
| Trade-off | Requires top-tier hardware |
| Trade-off | Can be unstable |
How to install Hysteria Shaders
- 1Install Fabric or Quilt with the Iris Shaders mod, on a Minecraft client between 1.20 and 1.21.3. Hysteria is Iris only and targets the newest loader features.
- 2Download the Hysteria Shaders .zip using the official page linked earlier, keep it zipped, and update your graphics drivers before the first launch.
- 3Launch on your shader profile, take Options, drop into Video Settings, and the installed shader list is there.
- 4Press Open Shader Pack Folder and place the archive into the directory Minecraft opens for you.
- 5Select Hysteria Shaders and press Apply. Compilation is slow on a pack running two lighting systems, so let the first load finish. If it crashes rather than compiling, check drivers and mod combinations before blaming the hardware.
This is Iris only and targets Minecraft 1.20 to 1.21.3, the narrowest range on this site, so both your loader and your client version need to match before you download. Update your graphics drivers first as well: on a pack this far forward, a failed first launch is more often drivers than hardware.
Running Hysteria Shaders smoothly
Hysteria Shaders is an ultra-impact pack running two lighting systems at once. Voxel global illumination and path tracing together are why the requirement sits at the top of the range, and neither of them degrades gently when the hardware is short.
The requirement is an RTX 3070 or RX 6800 with 8 GB of VRAM and 8 GB of system memory, matching Continuum for the highest figure listed here. The voxel data alone accounts for a substantial part of that memory before any tracing begins.
It targets Minecraft 1.20 through 1.21.3 on Iris only, the narrowest range on this site. That is a direct consequence of being written against the newest loader capabilities rather than ported back onto older ones.
Voxel range and trace sample count are the settings that reclaim the most. The pack can be unstable, so if performance collapses rather than degrades, check driver version and mod combination before assuming the load is the problem.
Tags
What to turn down first in Hysteria Shaders
Hysteria runs voxel lighting and path tracing at the same time, which is why it sits at the top of the memory list. Reduce what it has to hold before what it has to do.
- 1
Render distance: the voxel model and the traced light both scale with it. This is the setting that decides whether it runs at all.
- 2
Ray count: the frame cost. Fewer rays is noisier and settles while you stand still.
- 3
Reflection quality: the last saving before you start losing the lighting you paid for.
How many people run Hysteria Shaders?
Three million installs on a pack that is Iris only, needs 1.20 or later and has not had a release since 2024. It has the narrowest version range in the ultra tier, so every one of those installs came from a player who was already on a current client.
| Downloads of Hysteria Shaders on Modrinth | 3,193,468 on the maker's page |
|---|---|
| People following Hysteria Shaders for updates | 579 |
| Last Hysteria Shaders release by the author | 2 August 2024 |
| Where Hysteria Shaders sits on this site | 16 of 26 packs we could count, see the full ranking |
The Hysteria Shaders figures above were counted on 21 August 2026. Modrinth is the only platform with an open counter for Hysteria Shaders, so anyone downloading it elsewhere is not in this number.
Where Hysteria Shaders sits in our shortlists
The most demanding pack we list, and therefore a fixture of the high-end shortlist:
Ready to install Hysteria Shaders?
Iris on a recent client is the requirement. Our walkthrough puts Fabric and Iris together for exactly that combination.
Installation GuideSomewhere to run Hysteria Shaders
Hysteria is written against the newest loader features, so it belongs on a current client and a current world. If your group is still on an old version, the world is the thing to move first.
Hysteria renders on your own card through Iris and leaves the server alone. What has to match is the version: a current pack wants a current client, and the world is the easiest of the three to move.
Set up a world for Hysteria ShadersCode GUIDE5 is ours, and it applies to a Hysteria Shaders world from the link above.Last updated . This page is rebuilt when its own figures change, not on every deploy.