Hope this cures the disappearing cloud shadow issue too 

 

I haven't noticed any cloud shadow issues since I zeroed the terrain shadow slider distance, but YMMV. 

I haven't noticed any cloud shadow issues since I zeroed the terrain shadow slider distance, but YMMV. 

 

Hmm, thats interesting.

 

So you were getting issues with cloud shadows before then? 

I finally turned on cloud shadows with version 2.2.  My last flight was perfect.  The flight before I was getting all sorts of anomalies, including the disappearing shadows when you turned your head sideways, and when you raised and lowered your point of view.  There were a many instances of what appeared to be shadow corruption.  The biggest difference between the two flights was that the last time I was just enjoying the scenery and the time before I was looking for problems.  This was on 2.2 which was probably before they changed the variable names.

 

I'm 99% certain I know what's causing the disappearing shadows, and about 80% certain that it won't be addressed in this patch.  I"ll predict that for the first two days people will say it's been fixed, then the reports will start coming in about disappearing clouds again.  I'll get in touch with LM about it, but the fix will be either very simple or nearly impossible.

 

Hook

I finally turned on cloud shadows with version 2.2.  My last flight was perfect.  The flight before I was getting all sorts of anomalies, including the disappearing shadows when you turned your head sideways, and when you raised and lowered your point of view.  There were a many instances of what appeared to be shadow corruption.  The biggest difference between the two flights was that the last time I was just enjoying the scenery and the time before I was looking for problems.  This was on 2.2 which was probably before they changed the variable names.

 

I'm 99% certain I know what's causing the disappearing shadows, and about 80% certain that it won't be addressed in this patch.  I"ll predict that for the first two days people will say it's been fixed, then the reports will start coming in about disappearing clouds again.  I'll get in touch with LM about it, but the fix will be either very simple or nearly impossible.

 

Hook

 

Anyone noticed at certain times of the day there is a weird banding on the side of the aircraft - you use time preview and you can see it - first time I have seen this if you shut off aircraft shadows its gone I am talking the outside view

Patch me, baby...patch me.....  

 

v2.3 has made me such an entrenched  P3D-head....it really is...rather....embarrassing....

 

P3D Ses

Any news on this? Turning off terrain shadows is not a solution. Even FSX had terrain shadows, even though they were calculated by the CPU.

Any news on this? Turning off terrain shadows is not a solution. Even FSX had terrain shadows, even though they were calculated by the CPU.

 I believe they said that they were going to release a hotfix to fix multiple issues but are just waiting until any more issues are noticed.

Beau Hollis of LM wrote this in regards to the disappearing cloud shadows in the P3D forums

 

Quote from Beau on August 27, 2014, 11:22

 

We are aware of the issue, but there is not a way to fix it that won't come at a fairly hefty cost in terms of performance. What we may do is cone up with a fix and add a configuration option to enable it for 2.4. Basically what happens is only clouds you can see cast shadows. Clouds that are off screen don't cast so as you move the camera and clouds cull out, their shadows will disappear. We can do the visibility test separately for the view and shadow view, but this will mean that many more clouds will render into the shadow cascades.

 

GPU performance of clouds is directly related to number and size of clouds that render to the screen which is why the performance varies so much and get bad in situations like flying though clouds where lots of big clouds are drawing.

Beau Hollis of LM wrote this in regards to the disappearing cloud shadows in the P3D forums

 

Quote from Beau on August 27, 2014, 11:22

 

We are aware of the issue, but there is not a way to fix it that won't come at a fairly hefty cost in terms of performance. What we may do is cone up with a fix and add a configuration option to enable it for 2.4. Basically what happens is only clouds you can see cast shadows. Clouds that are off screen don't cast so as you move the camera and clouds cull out, their shadows will disappear. We can do the visibility test separately for the view and shadow view, but this will mean that many more clouds will render into the shadow cascades.

 

GPU performance of clouds is directly related to number and size of clouds that render to the screen which is why the performance varies so much and get bad in situations like flying though clouds where lots of big clouds are drawing.

 

this thread is rather about "terrain shadows" than about "cloud shadows" if I understood correctly.

 

 

this thread is rather about "terrain shadows" than about "cloud shadows" if I understood correctly.

 

It was, until fiftysix mentioned he hoped it fixed cloud shadows as well.  Since then it's been about cloud shadows.  Do try to keep up! :D

 

They already said they know what causes the terrain shadow problem and have a fix for it.  As for cloud shadows, they came to the same conclusion as I did about the cause.

 

Hook

It looks like the cloud shadows fix will have to wait until 2.4, but the terrain shadow fix really needs to come out before that. Currently one of the major advertised new rendering features (realtime terrain shadows) is not functioning. If they only "forgot to rename some variables", it should be a quick and easy fix, unlike the cloud shadows, which apparently require some more work.

 

As for the cloud shadows, personally I would rather live with a few disappearing cloud shadows, if the performance hit of fixing it is more than a few %.