Does anyone not have the sliding shadows bug?

[thereaverofdarkness2]

Disclaimer: I posted this topic once before and it was merged into another thread. It doesn't fit there, it's not the same topic. I am re-posting it in the hopes it doesn't get re-merged into a place it does not fit.

 

There's this bug that has been present since I started playing KSP back in 0.17, in which the shadows create triangle artifacts which slide along the edge gradually as the sun passes overhead. For a long time I'd just been putting up with it, figuring oh, the devs will fix it eventually, this game is in alpha. Well at some point I realized time had passed and this game had been in full release for a while, and this bug was still very much present. I decided to go browse a bit to see just how many times it has been mentioned. Much to my surprise, I can find next to nothing about it. I stumbled across just a handful of posts talking about this phenomenon, and most of the people responding seemed completely oblivious to the bug, like they'd never seen it before in their game. I might not have been surprised had I always experienced it in the same version of the game on the same computer, but it has been present every version of the game, on multiple computers, with different operating systems and different video cards from different manufacturers. Changing the graphics settings of the game never fixes it.

So that brings me to my question. Are any of you actually not experiencing this bug? And if so, can you show video footage or images of where the shadows would otherwise occur, but aren't?

 

 

For clarity, the glitch is seen along the edge of shadows that cast from one craft part onto another craft part, or sometimes (especially in older versions) on the edge of shadows cast onto the ground.

To replicate this bug: look at absolutely any shadow cast from one part onto another part, ever.

 

Video:

 

[Alshain]

I don't think it's a bug, or a phenomenon.  Everyone sees it that way.  The game engine technology renders shadows that way, I wouldn't count on it getting fixed unless Unity 5 added something they can make use of to improve it and they just haven't researched it yet.

[thereaverofdarkness2]

3 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I don't think it's a bug, or a phenomenon.  Everyone sees it that way.  The game engine technology renders shadows that way, I wouldn't count on it getting fixed unless Unity 5 added something they can make use of to improve it and they just haven't researched it yet.

No, it changes, and there are people who report different things. I've already seen a few posts in the other threads from people saying they have never seen this before. Also, it doesn't really make sense. It's not that GPU intensive to draw shadows that don't flicker, and I don't think the sliding triangles would really save GPU anyway.

[Alshain]

Just now, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

No, it changes, and there are people who report different things. I've already seen a few posts in the other threads from people saying they have never seen this before. Also, it doesn't really make sense. It's not that GPU intensive to draw shadows that don't flicker, and I don't think the sliding triangles would really save GPU anyway.

I never said anything about it being GPU intensive.  I said it was a limitation of the game engine casting shadows on the dynamic models.

[pandaman]

Have you tried adjusting the 'shadow cascade' (or something) setting in the graphics settings menu? I played with that a while ago and it made a difference

[thereaverofdarkness2]

8 minutes ago, pandaman said:

Have you tried adjusting the 'shadow cascade' (or something) setting in the graphics settings menu? I played with that a while ago and it made a difference

Yes, it makes a difference, but it doesn't affect the core issue. At current it seems to be affecting how crisp the shadows are, but other times I've seen it have other effects. I can only turn it up to 4 now, but it doesn't seem to need to be any higher than that.

16 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I never said anything about it being GPU intensive.  I said it was a limitation of the game engine casting shadows on the dynamic models.

But some people don't have the issue. I've seen a few pictures and images showing where it should occur but doesn't.

[Alshain]

@thereaverofdarkness2  Here is the same effect in a completely different Unity game.  Salt does appear to have some kind of smoothing that KSP does not but the effect is still there.  They also have a separate setting for "Shadow Resolution" which improves the effect some as well but in all cases it's still very noticeable.  I really do believe this is just how it renders shadows, but maybe Squad could still improve it a little as Salt has.  However, I'm confident that is not a bug, but a lack of a feature.

 

Edited June 28, 2016 by Alshain

[thereaverofdarkness2]

Perhaps it is a DirectX bug. Clearly it is possible to eliminate it. Case in point:

 

[Alshain]

56 minutes ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

Perhaps it is a DirectX bug. Clearly it is possible to eliminate it. Case in point:

Possible, but I didn't see any of the same kind of shadows in that video.  It only occurs when a dynamic part causes a shadow to be cast on another dynamic part.  If you will notice in his first video, only the tail fin and solar panel caused it, the shadow on the ground was fine.  Shadows from static models like buildings are also fine.

Edited June 28, 2016 by Alshain

[Majorjim!]

38 minutes ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

. I've seen a few pictures and images showing where it should occur but doesn't

Really? Where? Links?

 

5 minutes ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

Case in point:

I don't think that is a very good example. Is that your video? If so can you show something that shows it better like I did in the video I posted with the Ibeams on the wings?

[thereaverofdarkness2]

45 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Possible, but I didn't see any of the same kind of shadows in that video.  It only occurs when a dynamic part causes a shadow to be cast on another dynamic part.  If you will notice in his first video, only the tail fin and solar panel caused it, the shadow on the ground was fine.  Shadows from static models like buildings are also fine.

If you look closely in the video, you can see there are multiple dynamic objects casting shadows on other dynamic objects. For instance: at the top of his spacecraft, there are solar panels casting shadows onto the command pod.

[Alshain]

19 minutes ago, thereaverofdarkness2 said:

If you look closely in the video, you can see there are multiple dynamic objects casting shadows on other dynamic objects. For instance: at the top of his spacecraft, there are solar panels casting shadows onto the command pod.

I don't see any, every place that would be shadowed is lit by his lighting.

[Nathair]

1 hour ago, Majorjim said:

Really? Where? Links?

 

I don't think that is a very good example. Is that your video? If so can you show something that shows it better like I did in the video I posted with the Ibeams on the wings?

Did we learn nothing from OP's "KSP has unrealistic/distorted 3D rendering" thread? I suggest PEBCAK.