Given that Minecraft is a game with many "sharp edges", a basic form of antialiasing should be implemented. The switch to a higher OpenGL level opens up the opportunity for incorporating postprocess antialiasing, such as FXAA (or similar, which is supported by most chipset vendors), or SMAA (which can be implemented in many different manners, including shaders).

Full MSAA/CSAA antialiasing is a bit heavy, and since Minecraft doesn't have very high object complexity, wouldn't really make much of a difference compared to the postprocess-based solutions.

Forcing these types of AA within the GPU's control panel causes the UI elements to become blurry, as a side effect of forcefully applying the filter to everything. Implementing it in the game would mitigate that.

In addition, the "noise" caused by rotation is caused by the lack of mipmapping. Mipmapping would drastically improve how the game looks, but currently, external mods are needed in order to have it. Having less detail at further distances is a great improvement over just having "noise", or moire interference at shorter distances. Anisotropic filtering is a bit heavy, and could be discounted.

Given the rendering overhaul in 1.7, the vanilla client should have some visual improvements, that generally lead to the game looking much cleaner and smoother, without impacting performance.

Is this a priority for Mojang?