I wish LM would solve this... cloud shadows!

[Guest]

One of my major annoyances with P3D is how the cloud shadows pop in and out of view depending on where you look. This is so immersion killing...! Will LM ever do something about this? Just had this happening again (as in every flight I do) while taxiing: you are covered in shadows, you look sideways for 1 millimeter (I use TrackIR) and the shadows are gone completely. Sooooooo annoying. Check these screenshots and imaging the change happening instantly and constantly when looking left and right. Again, I really hope LM will have another look at this some time...

 

[edpatino 1,964]

Have you posted this at the Prepar3D forums (LM website)?.

Cheers, Ed

[Dazkent 113]

Think this has been there from day one, maybe that will change if they ever move to a new rendering engine.

[Rocky_53 1,579]

I agree Jeroen, it's REALLY bad. It will soon become less of an annoyance to me as I am increasingly getting closer to dumping P3d in favour of XP.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Rockliffe

[pracines 823]

I agree Jeroen, but I wont leave P3D to XP over it; P3D's add-ons are far superior to XP's and they always will be.🙂

[GSalden 4,657]

Jeroen is right... unfortunately 😏

[Oliver Ooi 85]

Oddly enough I saw some peoples say this is not annoying them at all..

[snglecoil 1,828]

I believe it was a feature implemented to improve performance. I agree that it can be quite jarring. I live with it as my old GTX770 is just adequate enough to run the sim with a little bit of eye candy. For those that have the system, though, it would be nice to have the option to draw all shadows. 

[pracines 823]

15 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

I believe it was a feature implemented to improve performance.

I don't remember hearing that, do you remember when this was part of a feature list?

I would think that LM would make this a possible "cfg option", or part of the slider detail, but a "feature", its not what I would call a feature.

However, if it was added as a "feature", it was likely added because of OOM in V3, I can't imagine this being added to V4. 

[snglecoil 1,828]

31 minutes ago, pracines said:

I don't remember hearing that, do you remember when this was part of a feature list?

I don’t remember exactly...It has been a few years. I just recall shadows having a pretty significant performance penalty initially and this was one of the measures LM took to lessen the blow.

...then again, my wife says my memory has gone south, so I could have completely made this up 😂

Edited November 25, 2018 by snglecoil

[Oliver Ooi 85]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

I believe it was a feature implemented to improve performance.

I heard about this also, but I really can't understand how the shadow appear/disappear could improve performance?

[Bobsk8 12,726]

2 hours ago, pracines said:

I agree Jeroen, but I wont leave P3D to XP over it; P3D's add-ons are far superior to XP's and they always will be.🙂

Switching to XP would be like leaving a wife you really love because she has a freckle. 

[Indy511 686]

Irritating it is. Especially when above the clouds and panning around the aircraft.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

You guys just noticed this? Hah! The reason LM doesn't fix it is it is a rare occurrence in a clean installation of P3d4 using default IQ settings. But once one uses high end settings, adds a weather add-on and changes cloud textures and structures, the cloud shadow bug becomes obvious. Rapid panning with Track IR really shows the obvious nature of this bug.

The problem is that the shadow/sun angle calculations have a bug in the math. It's somewhere buried in the shader code. In flat terrain the bug is less common. It is also less common at low sun angles. High mesh and tesselation settings make things worse also. I've found that ASCA clouds make things worse and Rex Sky Force clouds make the situation slightly better.

I have to agree with Bobsk8 though. Compared to the state of clouds and weather in XP11, this bug in P3d4 is a trivial matter. You all should visit the HiFi forum and read their disheartening update regarding the state of the Active Sky for XP11 beta.

Edited November 25, 2018 by jabloomf1230

[virtualstuff 758]

I agree Jeroen and I hope they will solve this one soon, frustrating to say the least 😉