Orebfuscation

Orebfuscation (from ore and obfuscation) is a common mechanic on civ servers which visually replaces certain blocks with others until a player comes within a certain distance, as a protection against x-ray. Usually, blocks obscured in this way include chests, snitches, and obsidian, and are rendered as stone. This replacement prevents x-ray from being able to find hidden infrastructure such as bunkers, as all they will see from a distance is natural blocks.

Orebfuscation is applied by the Orebfuscator plugin. Orebfuscator is one of the few plugins commonly used on civ servers that was not written specifically for civ as a genre.

Mechanics

Proximity Rendering

Until a player comes within a certain distance, Orebfuscator visually replaces certain blocks with others. Blocks obscured in this way usually include blocks that are used in defensive infrastructure, farms, bases, or anything else a player may want to keep hidden.

When a player comes within a certain radius (varies by server, but usually around 8 blocks) of these blocks, they are rendered as their normal block. Even if the player moves outside of the radius, they will keep their normal appearance until the player unloads the chunk.

Random Blocks

Although only a small portion of blocks are visible to a player at a time, Minecraft sends block data about every nearby block, even those completely occluded from view. As further obfuscation, orebfuscator will visually replace these hidden blocks with random other blocks. Since the blocks visually replaced in this way are hidden from view, a normal player will not see this mechanic at play.