Does Optimum Realism work with Forge

Yes. The pack itself is just a resource pack, so it loads on Forge fine. For the shader look on Forge you need Oculus + Embeddium (the Forge ports of Iris + Sodium). On NeoForge, Iris + Sodium run natively. We still recommend Iris + Fabric as the supported path.

Optimum Realism is a resource pack, not a mod — so it drops into .minecraft/resourcepacks/ and loads on Forge, NeoForge, Fabric, or vanilla without issue. The question is really about shaders, since that's what makes the pack look like the screenshots.

On Forge: Iris and Sodium are Fabric mods, so on Forge you use their community ports:

  • Oculus — the Iris shader engine ported to Forge. Runs the same LabPBR shaders (Kappa, SEUS PTGI, Sundial, BSL, Complementary).
  • Embeddium — the Forge port of Sodium, for the performance gain Oculus needs underneath it.

Heads up: Oculus is only maintained for older Forge (roughly 1.16.5–1.20.1) and is no longer keeping up with new versions. If you're on the current pack release (1.26.x), there isn't an up-to-date Oculus for it.

On NeoForge: good news — Iris and Sodium added native NeoForge support (1.21.1+), so you install the real Iris + Sodium, not Oculus. That's the better Forge-family route on modern versions.

What we recommend: Iris + Fabric. It's the setup the pack is tuned and tested against, it updates within days of a new Minecraft release, and every helper mod we reference (Continuity, Polytone, EMF, ETF) is built for it. Forge support works but tends to lag a version or two behind and the entity/colour mods are patchier.

For the full mod stack on the recommended path, see the Iris + Fabric mod list.

Related
Should I use Iris or OptiFine for Optimum Realism?What mods do I need to run Optimum Realism on Iris + Fabric?Why do mobs look chunky or wrong colour in Optimum Realism?Why does stone or variant blocks look grey and desaturated in Optimum Realism?Which Minecraft version is Optimum Realism for?

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