Visible Ores is a 16x Java Edition resource pack by Techy145 that gives every ore except coal a glowing outline and a border that connects across a vein, so ore stays readable in caves that shaders have rendered nearly black. It changes ore surfaces only, leaving light levels and everything else alone, which means it is neither an x-ray pack nor a brightness pack. It needs Continuity on Fabric, or OptiFine, to render its effects at all.
Visible Ores is a 16x resource pack for Minecraft: Java Edition that gives every ore except coal a glowing outline and a border that joins up across a vein. Techy145 built it around a specific problem: shader packs make caves genuinely dark, and a diamond two blocks away in near-black stone is easy to walk straight past.
It also carries a requirement that catches people out. Drop the ZIP into your resource packs folder on its own and almost nothing happens, because vanilla Minecraft cannot draw either of the effects the pack is built from.
The pack leans on two separate rendering features, and knowing which is which makes the settings far easier to get right.
Emissive textures are the glow. A second texture layer marks certain pixels as self-lit, so an ore's outline stays bright no matter how little light is reaching that block. That is what keeps a vein readable in a cave a shader has rendered close to black.
Connected textures are the border. Adjacent ore blocks look at what is beside them and draw a continuous edge instead of six separate outlines, so a nine-block iron vein reads as one shape rather than a cluster of squares.
The design intent shows in what the pack leaves alone. It does not brighten the cave, raise light levels or touch anything other than ore surfaces, so a shader's atmosphere survives intact. The trade is that it only helps with ore you can already see, and nothing here compensates for a tunnel you have not lit.
The two also fail independently, which is worth knowing when the result looks half right. Glowing ores with boxy individual outlines means emissive is working and connected textures are not. Joined-up borders that stay dim means the reverse.
Neither effect exists in unmodified Minecraft. The game has no concept of a self-illuminated texture layer, and no rules for a block texture that changes according to its neighbours. Both were invented by OptiFine, and the format the pack ships in is OptiFine's.
On Fabric and Quilt, Continuity implements that same format without OptiFine, which is why both official project pages name it as the requirement. It is a mod rather than a pack, so it goes in your mods folder and needs Fabric underneath it.
One note if you check Modrinth's file page. The current release lists no dependencies where earlier files named Continuity outright. The project description still states the requirement on both platforms and nothing about how the pack is built has changed, so read the blank field as an oversight rather than a change of plan.
Cost is modest but not nothing. This is a 16x pack with no animations, so the textures themselves are light. The emissive and connected-texture passes are extra rendering work, and how much depends on your Minecraft version, your shader and which mod is supplying the features.
Search for this pack and a fair number of guides will tell you OptiFine is mandatory. That advice is dated rather than wrong, and the difference matters.
It is not wrong because OptiFine provides both features natively, so an OptiFine profile runs the pack with no Continuity anywhere in sight. It is dated because the project no longer frames it that way. The CurseForge text those guides quote has been replaced, and it now names Continuity, matching Modrinth.
Which route you take follows from your setup rather than from the pack. Running Iris and Sodium for performance puts you on Fabric, where OptiFine is not an option and Continuity is the answer. On an OptiFine profile you already have everything required.
The official list covers iron, gold, diamond, emerald, redstone, lapis and copper in both stone and deepslate forms, along with the nether ores and the raw ore storage blocks.
Coal is a deliberate omission. It was pulled in the 1.20.4 update, with the reason stated plainly in the changelog: clutter. Coal is by a wide margin the most common ore in the game, and outlining every seam turns a cave wall into noise, which defeats a pack built to make the valuable stuff stand out.
Copper gets the same treatment as an option rather than a rule. A separate No Copper build exists for anyone who finds copper equally distracting, which is a fair position given how much of it 1.17 onward put in the ground.
Ancient debris is not on the list. Packs that do highlight it are generally a different project trading under a similar name, which is worth keeping in mind when a screenshot shows something this one does not do.
The current release went out in May 2026, and its number tracks the newest Minecraft version it supports rather than counting the pack's own revisions. That misleads people: a file called 26.1 sounds like it is for Minecraft 26 alone, when it actually covers everything from 1.21.7 through to 26.1.2 in a single download.
Where you get it changes what is available. Modrinth carries a short list, effectively the current release plus a few older ones covering 1.20.x and the 1.21.7 to 1.21.8 window. CurseForge keeps a far deeper back catalogue running to dozens of files. If you are on an older version and Modrinth has nothing for it, check CurseForge before assuming the pack does not reach you.
Two clarifications, because both send people to the wrong download.
This does not show you ore through stone. An x-ray pack works by making ordinary blocks transparent so buried ore is visible from outside, while this one only changes how ore looks once it is already in view. It is not a brightness pack either. Full Bright packs lift the rendering of every dark surface, a blunter instrument that washes out the contrast a glowing outline depends on.
The name is crowded too. Visible Ores Plus, Better Visible Ores, More Visible Ores and several near-identical titles are separate projects by separate authors, with their own ore lists, dependencies and update schedules. Techy145's pack is the one behind the two official links here, so check the author before downloading. Descriptions travel between these packs freely.
The pack alone will not glow, so begin with the mod that makes glowing possible. On Fabric or Quilt that means Continuity, taken from its own Modrinth page and dropped into your mods folder like any other mod, with its version matched to your Minecraft version.
Running Sodium alongside it is normal. Older Sodium builds need Indium before connected textures render correctly, while recent ones handle it natively, so check what your Sodium version expects rather than installing Indium out of habit.
Using an OptiFine profile instead? Skip Continuity altogether, since OptiFine supplies both features itself. The two are alternatives rather than a stack, and installing one does not require the other.
Take the pack from the Download section on this page, where the files are listed against the Minecraft versions they cover and each row opens the official Modrinth release, and leave it zipped. Put it in resourcepacks, then switch it on through Options and Resource Packs.
Ordering matters once more than one pack is active. Priority runs upward through the selected list, which means the topmost pack decides what happens where two of them contain the same file. Keep Visible Ores above anything else that retextures ore, or the other pack takes the block and the glow goes with it.
On OptiFine, two settings want checking under Video Settings then Quality: Emissive Textures on, and Connected Textures set to Fancy. Continuity turns its features on by default, though it has an options screen of its own if something has been changed there.
If the pack is not showing up at all, our guide to texture packs that will not load covers that side of it.
Not meaningfully on its own. It is a 16x pack with no animations, so the texture data is light. The emissive and connected-texture passes are genuine extra rendering work, and how much depends on your Minecraft version, your shader and whether Continuity or OptiFine is supplying the features, but the cost is modest rather than free.
On Fabric or Quilt, yes. Both official project pages state the requirement. Continuity supplies the emissive and connected-texture support that vanilla Minecraft lacks, and without it the pack loads but produces no visible effect.
Not any more, though older guides say so. OptiFine provides the same two features natively, so it works as an alternative to Continuity rather than in addition. Pick whichever suits your setup; you never need both.
Yes, with Continuity handling the rendering features. Older Sodium versions also want Indium for connected textures to draw properly, while newer ones do not, so check what your Sodium build expects.
The usual cause is no Continuity or OptiFine present, since the pack cannot produce either effect on its own. After that, check pack order in case something is overriding it, and confirm the file matches your Minecraft version.
Every ore except coal, covering the seven overworld metals and gems in both stone and deepslate forms, the two nether ores, and the raw material storage blocks. Coal was dropped in the 1.20.4 update because outlining something that common produced clutter rather than clarity.
That is the setup it was built for. Shaders darken caves considerably, and the pack adds contrast on ore surfaces alone rather than raising overall brightness, so the atmosphere a shader creates stays intact.
No. It changes how ore looks when you can already see it and never makes surrounding blocks transparent. Nothing buried behind stone becomes visible, and light levels and mob spawning are untouched.
They are unrelated projects by different authors that happen to share most of a name. Ore coverage, dependencies and update schedules differ between them, so check the author on the project page rather than trusting the title.
The current release spans 1.21.7 through 26.1.2 in one file. Modrinth also carries a few older builds for 1.20.x, while CurseForge holds a much larger archive if you need something further back.
Fullbright UB is a client-side resource pack that overrides the step where Minecraft turns light levels into on-screen brightness, so caves and night-time render as if fully lit without torches. It runs in unmodified Minecraft and also supports OptiFine and Sodium. Mobs still spawn as normal, because the actual light levels never change.
Xray Ultimate is a Minecraft: Java Edition resource pack by Filmjolk that renders ordinary stone see-through and draws ores, mineral blocks and spawners in bright colour. It installs without a loader and ships built-in highlighting for the ores added by more than a hundred mods. Being a pack rather than a mod, it can only redraw block data the server has already sent.
Night Vision is a small utility resource pack by Luracasmus that rewrites how Minecraft turns light levels into on-screen brightness, so caves, night-time and unlit interiors render as though you had a permanent Night Vision potion. It changes no block textures, so it layers over whatever pack you already run. It needs either Polytone or OptiFine to work, and a shader pack overrides it.
