Lost Tape Shader

Lost Tape Shader

An analog-horror shaderpack for Iris and Oculus. Dense breathing fog swallows the horizon, real shadow-mapped shadows crawl across the terrain, and volumetric light shafts cut through the haze, all wrapped in VHS grain, dithering and PSX-era vertex wobble.

It is built on the classic fixed-function pipeline (GLSL 120) rather than a heavy PBR setup, so it runs fast even on weak GPUs while still hitting that Somber-style found-footage look.

Features

• Breathing fog: dense exponential fog that slowly swells and recedes, with adjustable start distance and sky swallowing
• Real shadows: distortion-mapped shadow maps including entities, with adjustable strength, softness (hard, PCF soft, very soft), resolution, distance and sun path tilt
• Volumetric light shafts: god rays marched through the shadow map. Fog darkens inside shadow columns, so bright streaks run along shadow edges
• Contact shadows (SSAO): objects cast soft screen-space shadows in corners and around block light, so torches produce visible shading
• Smart torch light: block light is exempt from the darkness curve and protects lit areas from shadow darkening, while caves stay pitch black
• Moonlight: adjustable cool night ambient that only affects sky-exposed surfaces
• PSX retro mode: vertex snapping (terrain only or including mobs), pixelation, Bayer dithering with reduced color depth
• Analog overlay: film grain, vignette, chromatic aberration, scanlines, analog flicker, VHS wobble
• Sun and moon toggles: remove them from the sky entirely while the light shafts keep falling
• 13 hand-tuned presets: every preset sets all options, so one click gives you a consistent look

Screenshots

Presets

Preset	Character
Lost Tape (default)	Balanced analog horror: fog, sickly green tint, grain, light PSX wobble
Director's Cut	Dense fog, swallowed sky, dark, scanlines
Verity	Very dark, desaturated, crushed blacks, VHS glitch, grim nights
Backrooms	Yellow-tinted, washed-out found footage with fluorescent flicker
VHS Tape	Noisy cassette: scanlines, wobble, sepia, strong chromatic aberration
Camcorder '98	Clear-ish but shaky found-footage image, brighter nights
PSX Horror	Pixelated, 16 colors, hard shadows, fog glued to the camera
Silent Fog	White-grey total fog, very soft shadows, intense light shafts
Dead Channel	Ice-cold broadcast look: blue tint, deep dark, heavy vignette and grain
Old Film	Nostalgic sepia film: desaturated, heavy grain, soft light
Sunless	No sun, no moon, yet the light still falls
Retro Arcade	Y2K retro without the horror: full colors, pixels, barely any fog
Faint Signal	Subtle variant for normal play with a light touch of dread

Settings

All options are adjustable in game under Shader Pack Settings, grouped into five screens. English and German localization are included.

Screen	Options
Atmosphere & Fog	Fog density, fog start distance, sky fog, breathing fog, darkness, night brightness (moonlight), torch brightness, sky gloom, sun/moon toggles and brightness
Shadows & Light Shafts	Shadows on/off, strength, softness, anti-flicker bias, resolution, distance, sun path tilt, light shafts, shaft strength, shadow streak contrast, quality, contact shadows (SSAO) and strength
Retro / PSX	Vertex snap, snap resolution, snap on mobs, pixelation, pixel size, dithering, color depth
Color Grade	Saturation, tint color (sepia, sickly green, cold blue), tint strength, contrast, faded blacks
Analog Overlay	Film grain, vignette, chromatic aberration, scanlines, analog flicker, VHS wobble

Requirements

Minecraft	1.16.5 to 26.x
Shader loader	Iris (Fabric/Quilt/NeoForge) or Oculus (Forge)
OptiFine	Not required, untested
GPU	Anything with OpenGL 2.1+, no PBR and no heavy passes

To install, drop Lost_Tape_v#.#.zip into .minecraft/shaderpacks/ and select it under Options, Video Settings, Shader Packs.

How it works

Lost Tape uses the classic OptiFine-format pipeline (GLSL 120) that Iris and Oculus fully support. The gbuffers programs apply lightmap shaping, a gamma darkness curve with a separately sampled block-light exemption, plus optional PSX vertex snapping in clip space.

A single composite pass does most of the work. It reconstructs view positions from the depth buffer (depthtex1, so glass and water don't block shadows or fog), derives screen-space normals via dFdx and dFdy for acne-free slope-scaled shadow biasing, samples a distortion-warped shadow map, ray-marches that shadow map for volumetric light with Bayer-ordered dithering, applies SSAO and blends the breathing fog.

The final pass handles the analog grade: black lift, contrast, desaturation, tint, ordered-dither color quantization, grain, scanlines, flicker, vignette and chromatic aberration. Dimension folders give the Nether and End their own fog-only composites.