Why LOD in Vanilla Minecraft Makes Sense (and Wouldn't Be a Problem)

Some time ago, I saw a thread about the Distant Horizons mod, where people were discussing how LOD (Level of Detail) optimization should actually be integrated into vanilla Minecraft. Regarding this, some users pointed out certain issues that really left me puzzled.

I'm not saying that there wouldn’t necessarily be any challenges in implementing this feature (even though I honestly can’t think of any), but I just wanted to explain why some of the concerns raised don’t actually make sense:

• "Due to Minecraft's structure, it would be difficult to implement in vanilla." There’s not much to say about this—it’s simply not true. If a small team with a low budget and no access to the source code managed to do it, Mojang, with all its resources, could absolutely introduce an optimization that has been a standard in 3D games for at least twenty years.
• "Mojang doesn’t want to introduce this feature because it would go against Minecraft’s philosophy, where anything that isn’t loaded is left to the player’s imagination." But this would be a completely optional feature that could be turned on or off, even disabled by default. More importantly, Minecraft has evolved over the years, gradually moving away from its original simplistic aesthetic. Just look at the increasingly complex and detailed mobs. LOD would be a completely stylistically consistent addition.
• "It would be too demanding for older devices." This is a really strange claim—LOD is an optimization technique. The very definition of "optimization" is the opposite of making things harder to run. A low-end device that can handle a certain number of chunks would be able to manage them better with LOD and potentially render even more chunks using the same resources.
  • It’s true that more terrain would need to be generated, but this wouldn't create performance issues. The solution is simple: lower-priority rendering for chunks that are farther away from the player.
  • More generated terrain would lead to larger save files, but would it really be that much heavier? Even if it were, distant chunks could be generated in a more approximate way or simply not saved at all if they haven’t been explored. These are just quick solutions I came up with on the spot—an experienced, full-time development team with proper funding would have no trouble finding and implementing even better ones.