What oculus does
Oculus is a client-side Minecraft mod created by Asek3. And it brings shader support to modded setups on Forge loaders. The project is an unofficial fork of Iris, modified specifically to run with Forge Mod Loader. On Modrinth, it falls under the Building & Decoration and Performance categories.
If you play with mods on Forge or Neoforge, Oculus gives you a way to load custom shader packs. The project focuses on making shader rendering work in modded environments. It aims to keep compatibility high when you combine it with other gameplay and visual mods.
Dependencies and installation requirements
Oculus runs only on your local game client. Client installation is required if you want shader rendering, while server installation is completely unsupported. Real talk, you should never upload the mod jar to a dedicated server.
You also need Rubidium, an optimization mod created by Asek3. Oculus requires Rubidium as a dependency. The two mods work together so Oculus can use your graphics card effectively.
For platform support, Oculus works on Forge and Neoforge loaders. So it supports Minecraft versions 1.16.5, 1.19.2, and 1.20.1. The project is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only.
Shader pack support and mod compatibility
Oculus includes backwards compatibility for existing shader packs. You can run packs originally built for ShadersMod or OptiFine without changing any files. They work out of the box.
Even though it runs OptiFine shader packs, Oculus is completely incompatible with the OptiFine mod itself. The project documentation notes that Oculus isn't and never will be compatible with OptiFine. You cannot run both mods together in the same game profile.
Where to report issues
The project maintains an organized codebase adapted from Iris. Because Oculus is an independent fork with its own changes, the upstream Iris developers don't manage its bugs. If you run into visual glitches, performance drops, or crashes while running Oculus, don't report those issues to the official Iris GitHub repository. Direct all bug reports and questions to the Oculus project channels.
