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.
 * Clouds were added in Pocket Edition 0.6.0. They can only be seen in fancy graphics, and if so, the clouds will appear opaque and 2-dimensional in similar to fast graphics.

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.
 * In Infdev, clouds had a texture instead of being completely white.
 * In Pocket Edition, clouds are completely flat and 1 pixel thick.
 * If a cloud floats through an enclosed area, (e.x. a sky home with a roof) and the sun is above the cloud, you can see the sun through the cloud and roof.