What is Entity Culling?
Entity Culling by tr7zw skips rendering entities and block entities that are fully hidden behind blocks. Vanilla renders every mob and chest in range even through solid walls; this mod path-traces visibility on a background thread and culls the invisible ones, reclaiming the frame time they wasted.
The gain scales with entity density: mob farms, villager breeders, and storage rooms full of chests see the largest improvements, frequently double-digit FPS.
Behavior and Options
- Async ray tracing: visibility checks run off the main thread, so the culling itself costs almost nothing.
- Correctness guards: entities re-render the instant any part becomes visible; nametags and glowing-effect handling have dedicated options to avoid information loss.
- Block entity culling covers chests, signs, banners, and modded machines with animated renderers — a big deal in base interiors.
- Config: whitelist entity types that should never cull (bosses with map-wide effects), adjust tick-culling behavior, and tune trace distance. Defaults suit almost everyone.
- Works alongside Sodium/Embeddium; the mods target different stages of the frame.
Client-side only — servers see nothing, and it is safe everywhere including vanilla multiplayer.
Entity Culling FAQ
Does Entity Culling cause mobs to pop in?
Visibility rechecks run every frame asynchronously, so entities appear the moment a pixel of them could be visible. Pop-in artifacts are rare and usually fixed by updating the mod.
How much FPS does it add?
It is proportional to how many entities are hidden. Near mob farms or chest walls, 20–50% frame-time improvements are common, while little changes in open terrain with few entities.