Smooth Modern | Modern Style HD Minecraft Texture Pack (256 x 256)
A contemporary, modern HD texture pack has been in demand for a long time, and finally, it has been created. For those of you who prefer a 16x default resolution texture pack, why not check out ModernCraft. For everyone else, there's Smooth Modern, smashing through your pixels 256 at a time.
So how does it look? Better than a lot of HD texture packs, that's for sure. Detractors of the HD style often complain of grainy textures that don't work with the blocky appeal of Minecraft. Smooth Modern doesn't waste too much time trying to be photo realistic (although it does use some textures from LB Photo Realistic Texture Pack,) rather it tries to put a realistic spin on the otherwise anachronistic textures.
It should be mentioned at this point that this is not so much an original texture pack as a mash up of textures from other HD texture packs. LB Photo Realism is one of the packs that has been drawn from, as are Misa's Realistic ( a great 64x HD texture pack that I reccomend trying if you can't run this one, Adriorn's Basico (also has a 64x version) and Aageon's Bumpmaft.
As a result of all this mashing, some textures work better than others. Signs and rails for instance, look a little too rustic to really be considered 'modern' or even 'smooth'. Even the chests are very old school being made of wooden planks - which fits with the Minecraft theme, but not with a 'modern' one. Carpets and glass blocks on the other hand, have a very sleek finish that I think will be appreciated by those looking for a modern aesthetic.
How much you'll appreciate this texture pack very much depends on whether you're looking for slightly slicker HD textures, or whether you're looking for a modern overhaul. If the latter, you're probably going to be disappointed. There's not much truly 'modern', not in the sense ModernCraft made block types appear modern with high speed style rails, glass doors, fluorescent lights and packing boxes instead of wooden chests. Still, worth a try eh.
HIGH RESOLUTION WARNING
If your game freezes or crashes after installing this texture pack, it is not 'broken'. Either you haven't used the HD Texture Pack patcher (OptiFine will also work), you just don't have enough memory in your PC to run 256x texture packs, or you haven't assigned enough memory to Java. Either way, the crashing can be fixed by opening the .minecraft folder (Windows Key + R) and opening the options file. You'll see that the texture pack is named in the 'skin' field. Just delete the name and save the file. Next time you open Minecraft, you will be using the default texture pack.