
One thing remains undisputed: the shaders do most of the heavy lifting. At first glance, the buildings and skyscrapers appear unmistakably realistic, but the illusion falls apart quickly once the gaze sets on the Space Needle itself, as well as the noticeably blocky trees surrounding it.

User u/rudarbtce1974 shared a picture with the gaming community on Reddit that showed the Pacific Northwest city of Seattle, complete with its iconic Space Needle tower, possibly recreated in-game as part of Minecraft's Build The Earth project. RELATED: Minecraft Player Spends 2.5 Years Building This Amazing City

Today's example screenshot of a recreated real-life city uses one such shader pack. How far a shader will upgrade Minecraft's visuals varies largely between the packs – with some being capable of achieving photorealistic looks. A good shader will make the voxel landscape come alive in breathtaking fashion, though often at a great burden to the user's hardware. Within this intricate tapestry, Minecraft's shader packs represent a cultural cornerstone of the game's modding community. It is a game that embraces unorthodox builds and thinking outside the box, and the Minecraft community has eagerly pushed the envelope in every conceivable way over the years. Even with the vanilla version of the game, the unique simplicity of this iconic sandbox allows players to create marvelous, fully-realized projects such as building a functional MS Paint program within Minecraft.

One Minecraft player elected to showcase how a mix of custom shaders, graphical mods, and texture packs can yield ultra-realistic results.
