Horizon againstJava Edition.
The same three computers ran both games through the same world, on the same flight path, with the same settings. Here is what you would notice, in plain words, including where Java Edition still wins.
ThinkPad laptopAbout 50% fewer hitches, and 209 FPS on average against 126.
Mac miniNo hitches at all in Horizon; 423 a minute in Java Edition.
Gaming desktopAbout 70% fewer hitches, and 2,224 FPS on average against 1,824.
Pick a computer
Three of the project's own machines, from a 2016 laptop to a gaming desktop.
On the ThinkPad laptop, Horizon hitched 242 times a minute against Java Edition's 470. It got into the world 34% faster and used 62% less memory.
Hitches in a minute of play
A hitch is a frame slower than one refresh of a 60 Hz screen, so you see the same picture twice. Red marks are the long ones, under 30 FPS, that you feel as a stutter.
Long stutters a minute: Horizon 25, Java Edition 36.
Frames per second
On average
In the worst moments1% lows
Waiting
From launch into the world
Loading new terrain
Memory while playing
Memory in usepeak 1.0 GB and 2.1 GB
Java Edition needs 2.6 times more, which matters on a computer with 8 GB.
Where every frame landed
- Over 120 FPS
- 60 to 120
- 30 to 60
- Under 30
Feel the difference
Both views pan at the same speed, but each one only moves when its game finishes a frame, using the frame times measured on the ThinkPad laptop at render distance 12. Every freeze and jump you see is a hitch.
Horizon0 hitches so far
Java Edition 26.30 hitches so far
A replay of the measured distribution of frame times, not a recording. Your screen shows at most its own refresh rate, so in real time every frame faster than that looks the same. 4x slower plays the same frames at a quarter of the speed, so each one stays up long enough to see.
Where Java Edition is still faster
Every case in these runs where the original game did better. Steadier frames at long render distances is on the roadmap as work being done now.
- Loading new terrainThinkPad laptop, render distance 12Java Edition 46.9 s/Horizon 59.7 s
What about your computer?
Pick your graphics card and processor. The estimate starts from the measured computer closest to yours and scales it by the chips' specifications, so it is a range, not a promise.
Expect roughly 49 to 160 FPS in Horizon's worst moments, against 15 to 47 in Java Edition.
Horizonat least 73 FPS on average · in the world in 16 to 22 s
Java Edition63 to 200 FPS on average · in the world in 32 to 44 s
Scaled from the Mac mini, the measured computer closest to yours, by the two chips' published specifications. Drivers, cooling and the operating system can matter as much as the chip, so treat it as a rough idea and run the benchmark below for your real figure. Horizon's average there was held back by the display, so the estimate only gives a floor.
How it was measured
Each game starts from a fresh world (seed 1234, creative), waits until every chunk around the spawn is loaded and drawn, then visits a village, a forest, an ocean and a mountain. At each it waits for the terrain, holds for 2 seconds and flies a straight 192-block path in 12 seconds, recording every frame.
VSync off, no frame cap, a 1280x720 window, simulation distance 12, everything else at vanilla's defaults. Java Edition 26.3 runs as players get it, with the official launcher's Java options. Each figure is the median over the runs, measured between 2026-10-22 and 2026-11-04.
The full method and its caveats are in docs/benchmark.md.
Benchmark your own computer
Run this in a terminal. It flies the same path and writes a report to the benchmarks folder of the game folder. Share it on Discord and your machine helps make these numbers better.
horizon-client --benchmark standard --render-distance 12