An enchanted elytra will allow you too see through certan blocks/entities.

I don't know if this is a duplicate, as there are a lot of bugs reported on the topics of graphical, enchantment & elytra. I'm standing in falling sand that looks like snow in the screenshot. I've noticed this on a 1.10 server and my 16w41a world. It'll probably be in other versions too.

If it helps, here's the command for my elytra: /give @p minecraft:elytra 1 0 {ench:[

{id:0,lvl:10}

,

{id:1,lvl:10}

,

{id:3,lvl:10}

,

{id:4,lvl:10}

,

{id:7,lvl:10}

],HideFlags:6,Unbreakable:1}