The Problem With Minecraft: Java Edition

Minecraft Java Edition has been having a serious problem for many years. It is the reason why many players have either stopped playing new updates, or switched over to Bedrock Edition.

It is the reason why the game is so laggy, and why players rely on mods like Optifine and Sodium, when they shouldn't have to.

In this video, we talk about the performance issues with Minecraft Java, and how it will affect the future of the game.

Credit:

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Fizzy Banger

[FizzyBanger]

Hope you enjoyed this video! Now, I have given credit to some key sources for this video, which you can check in the description.

A lot of this wouldn't be possible without the people who've pointed out Java Edition's problems before me.

That being said, the game is still really fun, I'm still really excited for 1.20 and beyond. But I just hope I won't have to wait for Optifine to update to the latest version before I can enjoy the new features. And I hope those who mod their game do so from official sources :)

[JHak]

Fun fact: Mojang has tried to add Optifine officially into the game, but the reason it was never added was because the creator didn't agree to it being added.

[lasercraft]

So really one of the biggest problems is that IF they tried to improve the performance people would just complain that they didn't add anything. -Kinda like they did with the Bees and Bugs update...-

[enchanted_games]

1.19.4 was insane in terms of performance improvements, it basically added the same optimisation that lazyDFU does into the vanilla game and there’s almost no lag spikes (for me at least) when chunk builder is on threaded.
I’m still going to be using sodium but it just shows mojang is going in the right direction

[iampetr]

I absolutely agree you have to download at least 6 performance mods to make the game playable and still if you fly with elytra into chunks that you havent visited yet, the game will still render them very poorly.

[JHak]

I think "The problem with Bedrock Edition" video is fitting as a continuation. This is a really well built and detailed video, and Bedrock is worth mentioning too.

[joeyreinhart]

FYI, lazydfu isn't needed in 1.19.4 IIRC, since Mojang improved the vanilla DFU loading to just a few milliseconds, so it doesn't need to be lazy loaded anymore

[foznoth]

I think Mojang bringing Gnembon on to the team may be something to do with this. He has a deep understanding of the inner workings and with Carpet, how to mess around with bits. It's a different, outsider's view of the workings that may help.
Either that or they just really liked his accent.

[beefox__]

something i feel is not talked about a lot because people just never noticed it is that 1.18 had HUGE client lag improvements over 1.17, but due to the world height increasing at the same time, it looks about the same. 1.17 did however have a feature that allowed data packs to change world size. i played on a 384 height world in 1.17 using a datapack, and it was so laggy i could rarely even pause the game. now i play every day and even stream with that same world height using 1.18+
to not consider the world height changes between those versions is to give bias towards 1.17. and to ignore just how much optimization went into 1.18

[samanthaofcatarina]

The modding community 100% carries Java edition, if it weren't for them we'd probably only have updates on the bedrock edition

[virus]

Thoughts on this as someone who knows programming and Java:

I believe it was stated before (forgot where) that the Java code base is a mess and a complete spaghetti code during its early days. I believe that's also the reason why the terrain generation for the Caves and Cliffs update has taken too long, since they have to rework the entire code base of that feature, along with various rendering optimizations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not protecting them, but if they really did want to optimize the game, they could; it would only take more than a year or two as the code base was done by the "Old Mojang" and thus, needs to be studied, analyzed, and grasp completely before they can touch it. One wrong code and it may spell doom for the entire game as it could lead to various rendering glitches and other similar stuff.

Furthermore, the game (I think) still uses the old OpenGL library used by Notch and their team. Sure, they can update that but it's a freaking tedious task to update libraries or frameworks as you'll have to manually check all the codes you have to update the methods and variables that were changed.

TL;DR:
Optimization is possible but will take a very long time due to how the code base was programmed.

[me-myself-i]

Last time they dedicated an update to optimization (the 1.15 Buzzy Bees update), the community was very disappointed. It won't happen again.

[RedIvation]

Mojang is slowly improving the performance of Java Edition. Like in the *Cave* *&* *Cliffs* update, maybe they don't improve the performance all at once is because if they made a huge update the performance may decrease again so they do it slowly in each up which makes the make perform the same as the previous update.

[Fidgtt]

I use a mid end laptop to play Minecraft and I definitely agree that you have to download at least a few mods to make the game bearable. This gets even worse depending on which biome I'm in. In a jungle, my FPS drops to about 25 when it should be at 60 or higher.

[dylanupton]

They actually released 1.19.4 this past week which finally fixes the game load time! No more lazydfu mod necessary, thank goodness.

[silverace_]

One of the main reasons why they aren't able to implement this stuff is the modding platforms/how jumbled the source code is. Looking at fabric, people are given tools and stuff to build around and slightly into the game. However looking at Minecraft source code, it's apparent that the games code wasn't organized and as a result it just got worse. That's why they redid it in C+ as bedrock edition. (Bugrock lol)

[masterdeetectiv]

Im pretty sure 1.15 was the optimisation update. They needed to do it because of the beefy nether update.

Also iirc mojang was going to work with optifine to incorporate it into vanilla but they couldnt agree on what to do with the optifine capes so it went nowhere

[NoobRager]

This is just a theory, but it's possible that because the Mojang staff most likely have incredibly high-end PCs, they may not notice various random lag spikes as much as your average Minecraft player. This could be part of the reason why they haven't made as many changes to Java's performance.

[Tasteful_Edits]

For Mojang, (or more likely Microsoft) getting people to play Bedrock Edition is more desirable then fixing Java because of the higher profit potential. It's no secret they're pressuring Java players to move over.

[locki_dos]

You shouldve looked into java itself to understand why Java Edition is getting worse performance with each update.

For Java there is the JDK (Java Development Kit) and
"Java" / JRE (Java Runtime Environment) which is what you install inorder to run java apps like minecraft.

The JRE is running the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) since Java apps do not run on machine hardware, they run off of the Java Virtual Machine. The benefit of this is so that you can run the same app without consideration for which platform it is being run on since each platform just needs to have a JRE to run the app through the JVM but, This is also one of the main reasons as to why performance in minecraft java edition is poor. Since your device isnt running minecraft natively but through the virtual machine: it uses more resources dedicated to the virtual machine on top of the app.

But on top of that Java uses a Garbage Collector it's there to monitor and manage the memory/data of the app and how its used. This is to prevent memory leaks without having programmers actively do memory management within their code. The Garbage Collector is constantly running when a java app is running and the more memory/data it has to keep track of the more it hogs resources and performance; thus why the more things added to Java edition as a whole the more performance in Java Edition gets worse.