(Sodium) Streamline

Streamline is about when the game renders and how hard, rather than what is in the frame.

It culls nothing. What gets drawn is Sightline's job.

The governor

Window unfocused  15 FPS
Window minimized  3 FPS
Idle 5 minutes    30 FPS
Any input         cap lifts instantly

Holding a movement key counts as input, so running in a straight line for six minutes will not throttle you. Minimized stays at 3 rather than 0 so multiplayer stays in sync while the window is down.

Pacing

Two extras, both off by default because both cost something. A precise frame limiter that lands frames on time instead of overshooting, at the price of a sliver of one core. And adaptive VSync, which tears rather than stalling a whole refresh on a missed frame, if your driver supports it.

Small things, every frame

• Freeze animated textures by category - water, lava, fire, portal, the rest.
• Stop the lightmap rebuilding every tick just to make torches flicker.
• Turn down how much ambient block detail the game samples around you.
• A faster path for particles in open air, and batched HUD drawing.
• Rebuild the F3 overlay ten times a second instead of every frame.
• Switches for the enchantment glint and the vignette.

The debug overlay. There is a separate FPS meter that sits top-right.

The small print

• Client only, NeoForge 1.21.1. Nothing touches the server.
• Sodium optional, for the settings pages.
• The 26.2 build drops the precise limiter, HUD batching and the vignette toggle.

The rest of the series

Related mods

Client-side, NeoForge 1.21.1. Free to use in modpacks.