DX11 - Minmus/Ike black surface

[Van Disaster]

Not actually sure where to put this, because solutions might be found involving mods, however the issue is also present in a stock game.

Running dx11 mode ( start with -force-d3d11 )

* Minmus' surface turns completely black below 800km altitude

* Ike is also reported to behave similarily, possibly other bodies too

Minmus is ok in the tracking station and from altitude.

I'd like some ideas about exactly what's causing this so I can investigate possible solutions using kittopia, perhaps in extremes by using Minmus heightmap data on a clone of a different planet and swapping that in via RSS or something. I don't know enough about how planets are composed and rendered at the moment to know what routes to investigate.

[helaeon]

My thought is it has something to do with how shaders are applied, possibly by Unity itself.

I have a feeling it's a common reason as to why shadows in the SPH are messed up and your ship turns purple when transsonic and heating effects are applied. It probably has something to do with a shader or texture that is applied to Minmus when you get close enough for it to go into a higher detail mode.

This is all speculation based on my observations mucking around with dx11 mode. I really don't know.

[Superfluous J]

Use -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded instead. It doesn't help as much with the memory (but it does save some, and doesn't hurt framerates for me like -force-opengl does) but it doesn't suffer all the graphical glitches -force-d3d11 has.

[Van Disaster]

Use -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded instead. It doesn't help as much with the memory (but it does save some, and doesn't hurt framerates for me like -force-opengl does) but it doesn't suffer all the graphical glitches -force-d3d11 has.

That's because running that on it's own puts you in SM3/DX9 look at the top of your log. At least that's what using that does for me.

@helaeon: I'm not actually that au fait about how planets work - they switch from one topography to another ( scaledspace->pqs ) at some point? I would imagine that's 800km from Minmus and yeah I'm guessing it's also the shader ( read: material ) but I don't know what options there are to change that, if any. I've got no idea about the details of either way of planet rendering & coming up short on links for those right now.