Skin transparency issues/Skin turns into a transparent skin above y:125 (in/above cloud)

Or cloud level

Reopening and making this the main ticket for 15w47b.

I am currently investigating this problem. It seems rendering differences between my development machine and most boxes out there masked the bug.

Can anyone who is looking at this ticket post their GPU/OS/Driver version and if they are seeing things properly or not ?

It has been narrowed down to the display of clouds and the Y level. Doesn't seem to be related to GPU

When picking up items they also become transparent (OS X 10.11)

I was at any Y level and it made no difference

can confirm, that skin is always transparent with clouds off, and always when above cloud layer

With clouds turned off, skin is transparent at all Y levels, from 0 to 255. With clouds turned on, it's only transparent above Y=125. But another weird quirk I've found is that with clouds off, if you're inside the same chunk as a cow (and presumably any other mob, though I've only tested with cows), the transparency isn't there. As soon as you're in a different chunk from the mob, either because you moved or it moved, the transparency comes back.

EDIT A bit more testing shows that it works with all entities, not just mobs--if you're in a chunk with any other entity, the skin is fixed. However, it seems dependent on that entity also being rendered, as if you turn so it's not in view anymore, the transparency comes back.

So to clarify: if another entity is being rendered in the same chunk as the player, the skin works properly, but if not, the bug occurs (assuming Y>125 or clouds are off).

When wearing armor, it seems only the chest piece is affected by this bug as well. The legs, feet, and head armor slots seem to be fine, but the chest is transparent bright white, just like the skin. It doesn't seem to affect elytra though..

My diamonds pants went transparent too.

In 15w47b it's whole skin now, even with full armor. Look at my screenshot. 15w47b.png