Iris 1.1.0 for Minecraft 1.16 and 1.17

This release includes fixes for the vast majority of the hardware compatibility issues that Iris 1.0.0 faced. In addition, a compatible version of Sodium is now available for 1.17, allowing people to have incredible performance with shaders on both Minecraft 1.16 and Minecraft 1.17!

Unlike OptiFine, Iris for Minecraft 1.17 works with the core profile of OpenGL, a modern subset of OpenGL. Iris has a relatively robust shader patching system that allows existing shaders to work with Minecraft 1.17 without shader authors needing to change a single line of code. Any issues with loading a pack that previously worked in Minecraft 1.16.5 are bugs in Iris, and will be fixed in a future release. Shader authors do not need to change their shader packs for them to work on 1.17.

As a result of using the core profile, it's possible to use shaders with macOS (and Mesa drivers on Linux) on Minecraft 1.17.

Another significant change is that the way that Iris interally manages sampler objects has been completely rewritten. This shouldn't change anything right now, but it makes it significantly easier to completely remove one of the most fundamental restrictions that shader developers have had to deal with: the limit of 8 (or, in recent OptiFine versions, 16) render targets / color textures globally.

That being said, unlimited color textures is just one of the many exciting new additions to the shader pipeline that I have planned in the future, once Iris has reached complete parity with OptiFine's shader features!

This release is only possible due to the incredible work of JellySquid, who has spent many hours of her time updating Sodium to the latest Minecraft version and making it even better. She was also assisted by Kroppeb, who demonstrated an initial port of Sodium to 1.17, and also helped fix bugs with the new Sodium version.

I'd also like to thank the many members of the Iris team who have all come together to allow Iris to sustain its incredible development pace. In only a little over 8 months, Iris has gone from nothing to being on track to having full parity with OptiFine's shader features in the near future! The future is bright for Iris and the shader development community, and you can continue to expect improvements in compatibility, performance, and features with each passing month.

Known issues in this release:

• Shader pack configuration / options are not currently supported, limiting options for customization. This is being worked on, and will be supported soon.
• The custom uniform system, a feature used by many modern shader packs, is not currently supported. Work is being done on this front, and once Iris supports the custom uniform system, many more packs will work with Iris.
• Block selection outlines and fishing lines do not render properly on 1.17 with shaders enabled. I'm looking into a way to fix this that doesn't require shader authors to modify their packs.
• There are a variety of other rendering issues on the 1.17 version, but most of these are not major. Most should be fixed in the coming weeks as well. At this time, packs that work with Iris for 1.16.5 should work with Iris for 1.17 without game-breaking issues.