Vibrant Visuals disabled on Pixel 11 Pro XL: PowerVR C-Series CXTP-48-1536 tiered 3 (GDC says 5)

SHORT DESCRIPTION

On a Google Pixel 11 Pro XL (Tensor G6, Imagination PowerVR C-Series CXTP-48-1536, Android 17) the "Vibrant Visuals" mode is greyed out on a clean Google Play install with no packs or Marketplace content, caption: "Vibrant Visuals & Ray Tracing requires a supported device and compatible Marketplace content."

The cause is visible in the client's own device-tier data: in build 1.26.52.3 the table at assets/assets/tiers.bin (base64 JSON, read from my own installed copy, nothing modified) contains "PowerVR C-Series CXTP-48-1536" at tier 3 and "PowerVR D-Series DXT-48-1536" (Pixel 10) at tier 3. Vibrant Visuals needs tier 4+, and no PowerVR entry in the table is above tier 3 (26 PowerVR entries of 206). So the GPU is recognised and ranked one tier short, while Mojang's published Android tiering (GDC 2026, "Modernizing the Rendering of Minecraft", Android Device Tiering slide) lists "PowerVR C-Series or later (e.g. D-Series)" under Tier 5, enabled by default. The Help Center requirements (article 37413608357773) never mention PowerVR at all. Filing this as a data-vs-documentation inconsistency, not a feature request.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1. Install Minecraft 26.52 from Google Play on a Pixel 11 Pro XL (Android 17). Sign in. Add no packs or Marketplace content.

2. From the main menu open Settings > Video and look at Mode.

3. Optional: enable "In-game graphics mode switching", create a new world with no packs or experiments, open Settings > Video in-world.

4. Optional: Android Developer options > ANGLE Preferences > Minecraft > "native" (the Pixel 11 routes OpenGL ES through ANGLE by default since Sept 2026); force-stop and relaunch, so the game reads the native renderer string instead of the ANGLE-wrapped one. Repeat step 2.

EXPECTED RESULT

Per the published tiering a PowerVR C-Series GPU is Tier 5, so Vibrant Visuals should be selectable. If Imagination GPUs are intentionally excluded, the Help Center and the published tiering should say so consistently.

ACTUAL RESULT

Simple and Fancy are selectable; Vibrant Visuals and Ray Traced are disabled, with the caption above. Same from the main menu and in a fresh world. Same with the native driver forced (verified: a GPU-info app set to native reports GL_RENDERER "PowerVR C-Series CXTP-48-1536" / "OpenGL ES 3.2 build 25.3@6908880"; with Android's "show ANGLE in use" option on, Minecraft shows no ANGLE toast at cold start on native but does on default). Under the default configuration the game receives the ANGLE-wrapped string, which has no entry in the table. Both configurations leave Vibrant Visuals disabled.

RELATED

- MCPE-202879 (PowerVR, resolved Invalid 2025-04-04 as a feature request) predates the GDC 2026 tiering that places PowerVR C/D-Series in Tier 5; Pixel 10 duplicates: MCPE-227711, MCPE-233193, MCPE-241515.

- Precedents where in-rule devices were wrongly tiered and fixed: MCPE-229154 (Adreno 7xx, 1.21.130) and MCPE-239742 (One UI 8.5, "incorrect device tier", 26.40).

- The CXTP-48-1536 is OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan 1.4 conformant (Google Khronos submissions #1125/#1126), above the GLES 3.1 + compute floor.

QUESTIONS

1. Is tier 3 for "PowerVR C-Series CXTP-48-1536" and "PowerVR D-Series DXT-48-1536" intentional, or a stale value? If stale, raising the two entries to the published tier would fix every Pixel 10 and Pixel 11 report at once (and the ANGLE-wrapped string the Pixel 11 presents by default could map to the same entry).

2. If PowerVR is intentionally unsupported for now, is there a stated blocker or timeline, and can the Help Center and the published tiering be reconciled?

Happy to run any diagnostic build or log collection on this device.