Distant Horizons First-Time Setup and Rendering Options Guide

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Distant Horizons extends how far you can see by rendering simplified Level of Detail (LOD) terrain beyond the normal render distance. This guide covers turning that rendering on, choosing how far it reaches, picking a quality preset, and opening the options screen in-game.

Enabling DH Rendering

The core switch is the setting described as making Distant Horizons render LODs beyond the vanilla render distance. Turn this on to see distant terrain at all. If it is off, the mod will not draw anything past the normal view.

Some options are locked by outside forces. One tooltip notes that a setting is controlled by another mod through DH's API, so it cannot be changed in the UI or a config file. Another states that DH does not support changing a particular option on your version of Minecraft, and any values set through a config file or the API will be ignored.

Setting the LOD Render Distance

Use LOD Chunk Render Distance Radius to control how far LODs appear. The distance is measured in chunks. Treat the number as a target rather than a guarantee: the tooltip explains that the real render distance may end up above or below it depending on your other graphics settings.

Quality Presets and Detail

The quickest way to change visual quality is the preset setting that modifies a number of graphical settings at once. Lower it if your GPU is maxed out or your framerate is suffering.

Several settings shape how detail is distributed:

LOD Dropoff Distance controls how far apart the drops in LOD quality are. Higher values spread the drops further apart but cost more memory and GPU time.
Max Horizontal Resolution sets the most detail LODs can render at, from fastest to fanciest.
Another quality setting governs how well LODs represent overhangs, caves, and cliffsides; higher choices cost more memory and GPU usage.
A separate option controls how quickly LODs lose quality with distance. Larger numbers make far terrain look better at a higher memory and GPU cost.

Two options affect quality based on the camera. Use Camera Pos for Quality Drop-Off makes DH judge quality drop-off from the camera position when true, or the player's position when false; enabling it helps free-cam mods, while disabling it helps multi-camera mods. Increase Quality When Zoomed In raises LOD quality while zoomed, such as through a spyglass or zoom mod, affecting only LODs visible through the camera view. Max Zoom Quality Increase limits how many detail levels zooming can add; a vanilla spyglass needs four detail levels to reach full quality.

Opening the Options Button

The Show The Options Button setting places the config button to the left of the FOV button. With it enabled, you can reach the DH settings screen directly from the in-game HUD. The config screen itself is titled as the Distant Horizons config.

A Few Things Worth Knowing Early

Show LOD Gen/Import Progress displays world generation and importing progress on screen while it runs.
The thread count setting changes how many threads DH uses. Raising it speeds up the distant generator and LOD loading but increases CPU and memory use and may cause stuttering. It scales relative to your CPU, so it should strain a two-core chip and a sixty-four-core chip equally.
Any hotkeys mentioned by the mod, such as debug toggles, are bound through the corresponding hotkey in the controls menu rather than a fixed key.

Start by enabling rendering, set a modest LOD render distance, and lower the quality preset if performance drops. Adjust individual detail settings only after you have a baseline that runs smoothly.