Knowing the time of day in Minecraft often proves useful, so one fan managed to create a simple but functional sundial to accurately display the time in the game. While the existing watch item already serves this purpose well enough, it’s smart Minecraft build offers a valid alternative that uses only wooden parts, although its dependency on third-party shader packs means the design won’t work in a vanilla game.
Daylight in Minecraft is a vital resource, especially early in the game where players often lack the tools and resources needed to effectively defend against the many monsters that come out of the night. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re stuck on a mining expedition or construction project, so keeping an eye on daylight is paramount to avoid being caught off guard by hostile mobs on the way home. To that end, the in-game clock allows players to instantly check the time of day, though the crafting recipe’s gold and redstone requirement means many players won’t be able to craft an item within the first few days.
While checking the position of the sun in the sky also does a good job at the start of the game, one fan has come up with a much more interesting way to display the time of day that you can see here. Designed by a user known as Reimanen on Reddit, who shared his creation via a post on the site, the easily constructed sundial consists of just eight fence posts and a hatch. While this design is a bit easier on the eyes by preventing players from occasionally looking directly into the sun, the design’s fundamental reliance on shadows means that Minecraft players will need to install the shader packand therefore quite a high-end machine to run the game on.
Shaders for Minecraft have been increasingly popular with the community over the years due to the vast improvements in lighting quality they offer. Not to be confused with Minecraftofficial support for ray tracing, there are a wide variety of these fan-made shader packs to choose from, any of which can be downloaded from trusted sites and installed as mods. While it’s technically possible to download shaders to several different platforms, they’re most popular in the PC version of the game and are generally the easiest to install in the Java version Minecraft.
Although many fans of the game have long hoped for easier access Minecraft mods on platforms other than PC, shaders in particular can be particularly heavy on game performance on older hardware. Regardless, it doesn’t look like the mods will be as accessible on the console or mobile versions Minecraft as they will be coming to PC soon.
Minecraft available on mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and most legacy devices.