Cloud



In the Overworld, clouds appear at layer 127. They have no practical purpose and are merely aesthetically pleasing. They always float in the same direction - towards the west - making it easy to use them to get the player's bearings.

Appearance


Clouds will appear differently on different graphics settings, and have a set pattern. Their appearance (color, shape...) can be changed with a texture pack.

Fancy graphics
On fancy graphics, clouds appear as about four block tall semi-transparent prisms. In the nighttime they turn a shade of blue and become more transparent. Their smallest horizontal dimensions are 12&times;12 blocks wide. They are similar in appearance to the real life cloud species stratocumulus.

Fast graphics
On fast graphics, clouds appear as opaque planes. They have no daytime/nighttime rotation. Their smallest horizontal dimensions are 8&times;8 blocks wide.

Pattern
Unlike many things in Minecraft, clouds are not procedurally generated. With a texture pack, clouds' color can be changed to anything, meaning you could have pink clouds if you so desired. The file can be resized to any size, meaning it would be possible to have a different cloud pattern each day.

History

 * Before the 1.8 update, clouds existed between layers 108 and 112, floating through anything in those layers and obscuring the player's view should he/she be inside them.
 * As of 1.9 Pre-release 5, clouds can be disabled in the video options.
 * Before 1.9 pre-release 4, clouds floated to the north.
 * As of 1.2.1, players can build much further above clouds.

The Xbox Edition

 * Clouds on the Xbox 360 Edition appear like they would on the PC, they are just for viewing pleasure, In the upcoming update they will be able to be turned off, so it will be clear skys, see Xbox 360 Edition upcoming features.

Future plans
Notch said on Reddit that he liked the idea of transforming clouds into blocks and making them collide with buildings, terrain, etc. On Get Satisfaction, a moderator of Mojang stated that Mojang said that "The current height regulation is just a temporary fix. Clouds will collide at some point, but not in the upcoming update." It is unknown when this feature will be implemented, though.

Bugs

 * Rain starts at the max world height instead of the cloud layer, causing rain to occur above clouds.

Trivia

 * If you switch between fast graphics and fancy graphics, clouds will be in a different place than they were before.
 * Clouds are a client-side feature. On a SMP server, the position of clouds is subjective to each individual user, and are not generated server-side.