Issue with Cloud Shadows appearing and disappearing in 2.3

[charleslee201 19]

exactly the same has fiftysix . tried everything (Its a real immersion killer that also distracts) count said it better my self

[vonmar 123]

exactly the same has fiftysix . tried everything (Its a real immersion killer that also distracts) count said it better my self

 

Did you do a video to share here on the forum showing the problem ?

[Alvega 2,124]

Vonmar, what's your specs? I get 35 to 40 FPS out of the same airport and with almost everything maxed out and real weather from ASN. How come you get that slideshow? Something must be wrong there.

[charleslee201 19]

Did you do a video to share here on the forum showing the problem ?

No

[fiftysix 6]

Why not just fly your flight from the inside the cockpit?

 

I mostly do all my flying from inside the VC... If you see most of my videos, they are 95% in the VC.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH3Cfp6sBorkqnAqGnCrz0A

 

But it was from the VC and panning with trackIR I noticed the cloud shadow popping issue. I did the video from spot mode to better show the problem.

 

But, if you're saying why don't you just fly from inside the VC... That kinda defeats the object from having the spot camera view.

 

Thanks for all your comments guys 

[LHookins 3,103]

I've seen this effect before, both in FSX and other games.  What appears to be happening is that if the center point of the shadow is not on the screen, the shadow is not rendered. 

 

In FSX you could have CumulusX rendering clouds as objects that cast shadows.  These clouds marked thermals. The shadows of these clouds did the same thing.

 

And it's not just shadows.  I've seen other things disappear when their center point moved off screen.  Generally it isn't a problem, and the fact that you've never noticed it before illustrates this nicely.

 

Hook

[Mickeyj 35]

The problem about the shadows and the clouds might be a bit more complex. All i will say  now is just a guess i might be wrong. I tried a few runs yesterday with a fresh install of v2.3. I tried with the default cloud textures first. It is more subtle with the default than with the textures from REX4 that i tried afterwards. The disappearing of the shadows might be related to the spinning of the texture and the fixed lighting source, the sun.

 

The sun rays are a basically a linear movement (we consider Einstein never brought up his theories ;D ) Now if you you rotate a flat panel or you will notice a change in shadowing. The same i guess is happening in the sim. While turning the head the clouds start to rotate and eventually out of the light source (sun) The solution would be, stop the clouds from spinning !?

 

Now the next problem will arise. Depending on aircraft position (different headings and/or head movements) in the air and on the planet and @ a specific time of the day the shadows will not displayed properly even with fixed cloud textures.

The solution, bring up a real 3D volumetric cloud. Cons, one will need a hell of a PC to display just one cloud...

 

Another solution would be to disconnect the shadows from the spinning clouds!?

 

My conclusion, we got to live with this bug for now, maybe it isnt that what im guessing and there is a simple fix maybe not.

[Guest]

I also have this but only when the sun gets low, like around 5 PM in the summer (and the problem remains until it's dark). It's highly annoying and an immersion killer indeed. Imho. And I would call it a bug.  ^_^

 

The solution is to not fly during those hours... Another solution (which I havent totally checked yet) is to fly with the sun in your back or straight towards it because this problem seems to mainly occurs when I am flying with the sun at my left or right: when my viewpoint seems to cross a certain line that runs perpendicular to the sun, the shadows come or go. Or something like that. 

 

On the other hand... if I had to choose between this 'bug' or fps dropping to low teens, I might go for this 'bug'... But since performance doesn't change at ALL when the shadows appear or disappear, I really doubt if this is a performance option that LM added on purpose and I think it should be fixed! If it WAS a performance thing, performance should go up and down depending on what you see.

[vonmar 123]

Vonmar, what's your specs? I get 35 to 40 FPS out of the same airport and with almost everything maxed out and real weather from ASN. How come you get that slideshow? Something must be wrong there.

 

I have a very old crappy PC.

Running two huge monitors.

With a failing video card.

Intermittent PC case cooling fans.

Running a video screen recording program in full screen to shoot the test videos.

And, a lot of junk programs running that I really need to get rid of.

 

Happy to hear you have ASN working in P3D V2.3 ....... it crashes my P3D V2.3 (patch install).

 

But, I do not have blinking cloud shadows.

[Novation 534]

But, I do not have blinking cloud shadows.

 

 

 

Nor do I... regardless of TOD, viewpoint or weather, my cloud shadows do not switch on and off.

 

Could it be an issue when using TrackIR?

[fiftysix 6]

I have never had this issue up until latest build 2.3.

 

I do use trackIR but in the video, I am showing the issue with trackIR disabled and panning with the mouse and space bar in spot view

[LHookins 3,103]

This may be a video driver issue.  Especially if some people have the problem and others don't.

 

Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing the problem since I got a new computer that had ATI graphics instead of the nVidia in the old computer.

 

Hook

[vonmar 123]

This may be a video driver issue.  Especially if some people have the problem and others don't.

 

Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing the problem since I got a new computer that had ATI graphics instead of the nVidia in the old computer.

 

Hook

 

I have an old Nvidia card .. all is ok here.

 

You also mentioned : "I've seen this effect before, both in FSX and other games."

 

Do you have P3D Ver 2.3 installed?

[fiftysix 6]

I wonder if it has anything to do with the shadow map count thing LM introduced to the config?

 

This was not tweakable before on 2.2. Cloud shadows I think defaulted to 2048. In order to improve performance, cloud shadows are now 512 in the config. Can be adjusted, so might give this a try later.

 

Those who are not seeing this issue, please check your config to see if your shadows are 2048 or 512 as to those who DO have this issue

 

Would be interesting to find out if this could be the case

[vonmar 123]

"I wonder if it has anything to do with the shadow map count"

Is that the name of the parameter (shadow map count) in your CFG file?

 

Post here a copy of that line in your CFG.