FTB Chunks Zoomout

A lightweight, client-side addon for FTB Chunks. It lets you zoom the world map out further than FTB Chunks normally allows — and, more importantly, makes that actually usable instead of turning your framerate into a slideshow.

Works on any server. Nothing is required server-side.

Why the vanilla zoom limit exists

FTB Chunks caps how far you can zoom out based on available memory. Every map region it loads costs about 4 MiB of heap, plus a 512×512 native image and a 512×512 GPU texture. Before it lets you reach the furthest zoom level, it wants roughly 64× that much heap free — which on most modpacks never happens, so you stay locked at a middling zoom.

Simply removing that limit is not enough. Zooming all the way out then makes the map touch every explored region in a single frame: hundreds of megabytes allocated at once, a multi-second hitch, and a heap that stays full afterwards. That is why "unlock the zoom" mods tend to make the game stutter long after you have closed the map again.

This addon replaces the limit and the behaviour behind it.

Features

Extended zoom-out

A fixed, configurable zoom floor replaces the memory heuristic of FTB Chunks, so how far you can zoom out no longer depends on how much heap happened to be free at the moment you opened the map. Default is the furthest level FTB Chunks supports.

Prefer the stock behaviour? Turn overrideZoomLimit off and the original heuristic takes over again — no need to uninstall.

Smooth region loading

New regions are admitted a few per tick instead of all at once, so a full zoom-out fills in progressively over a second or two rather than freezing the game while it allocates. Only the large map is throttled; the minimap is untouched.

No stutter after closing the map

When the large map closes, FTB Chunks frees every excess region in one tick — closing a native image and deleting a GPU texture for each. After a fully zoomed-out map that is hundreds of them in a single frame. This addon spreads that cleanup over several ticks, which removes the hitch right after you press ESC and the garbage-collection churn that follows it.

Memory budget

An explicit ceiling on how many regions stay resident, defaulting to about 25% of your maximum heap (roughly 512 regions on an 8 GB allocation). Regions past the budget are left blank instead of pushing the heap into constant garbage collection. Raise it if you would rather see everything.

Faster map fill-in

FTB Chunks runs its map task queue only every 4th tick by default. While the large map is open, this addon drains it every tick under a strict time budget (2 ms by default), so chunks appear noticeably faster without the drain becoming a stutter of its own.

Map overlay

Top-right corner of the large map:

• Zoom level, relative to the default view — 1x at default, 2x / 4x zoomed in, 1/2x … 1/256x zoomed out.
• Resident region count against your budget, which turns yellow and reads (limit) once the budget is full — so it is obvious why distant tiles are blank.

All waypoints on the large map

Optionally shows every waypoint on the large map regardless of distance. The minimap and in-world waypoint beacons keep their normal rules.

Configuration

config/ftb_chunks_additions-client.toml

Option Default What it does overrideZoomLimit true Replace the memory-based zoom limit of FTB Chunks minZoom 1 Zoom floor; 1 is the furthest FTB Chunks supports maxResidentRegions 0 Region budget; 0 = derive from max heap regionLoadsPerTick 4 New regions the map may start loading per tick smoothRegionRelease true Spread map-close cleanup over several ticks regionReleasesPerTick 8 Regions freed per tick during cleanup fastTaskQueue true Drain the map task queue every tick taskQueueBudgetMicros 2000 Time budget for that drain, in microseconds showOverlay true Show the zoom / region overlay alwaysShowWaypointsOnLargeMap true Ignore distance limits on the large map

Support & Origins

Developed for the Werewolves vs Vampires modpack.

• Check out my other projects: CurseForge - epicskydex
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