Beta2 Bug: Terrain has linear artifacts with poor performance stalling at times.

#1 Linear effects or bug?

Hope this one helps as it really displays the artifacts.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=usC10zGxspY

#2 Thank you. Finally someone else confirms this! XP x64, Intel Q9650, 4GB RAM, nVidia 285 (no SLI). It's especially bad in Beta 2, and gets worse as terrain size and complexity increases. More screenshots:

This one shows a giant shadow cast onto a wall.. there's no object in this scene that could cast that shadow. The light source is directly overhead, so there shouldn't be any harsh shadows at all. On the more flat areas, not seen well in this shot, is the same random shadow stuff you're showing in the video.


Apparently it also does this.. the editor selection rendering and the actual rendered terrain geometry don't match. Already saved and reloaded for this one.

#3 EDIT: I seen your early post you think it the same?, I just read this post lol, so I do to, yes it like a shadows from above some follow the player some are fixed. :)

#4 Yeah, definitely. The screenshots don't really give you a great idea of what it's doing, but the artifacts I was describing behave identically to what you have in the video. I just turned up the shadow range to get a clearer picture of them. The more complex, large, and steep the terrain is, the more likely really strange shadow output is.

#5 I love your avatar btw!

#6 I get the same "moving shadow lines" too.
I was gona try capture it, but no need to now :)
Only noticed it in Beta 2

Win XP Sp3
8800GT

#7 Something in Beta 2 made it a lot worse. It was just impacting large high-res terrains in Beta 1, now it's hitting even the 256x256 terrains, ie the terrain in the warrior camp mission.

#8 As far as the second thing you mentioned "the editor selection rendering and the actual rendered terrain geometry don't match", are you sure that isn't a side affect of the terrain lod?

If you have something closer to you selected, or you set the terrain screenError to zero, I'm betting that goes away.

Beta1 256x256 terrains received no geometric lod at all, beta2 they do, so that can be a cause of some of this.

#9 Whatever issue is going on in that second shot is much less of a concern than the actual terrain shadow rendering bug, which is basically a show-stopper if you're expecting the terrain to be a primary part of your environment. :P

#10 I have to think that this change to the lod system is related. Until Beta 2, 256x256 terrains were the only ones that rendered shadows correctly, now they don't either. Are there some methods in there someplace I can use to totally disable terrain LoD? I want to see if that's causing the issue.

I don't mean to be so aggressive about this issue immediately after the Beta 2 release, but this is the third time I've reported it with no confirmation that it exists or is being looked into by the dev team at all. Obviously it may not impact every user, and it was far less severe in Beta 1, but this is a major rendering bug that at least 3 users with distinctly different hardware have confirmed experiencing.

*Edit: Updated all drivers, just in case. No change.
Updated DirectX. No change.

I just would like to see this in the known issues area so I can stop re-submitting it. :P

#11 Update: I think you may find this to be a more severe difference in terrain geometry than would ever be created by any LoD system.


Not all of the terrains that shadow incorrectly have this kind of geometry corruption(?).

#12 Yes I agree that is important issue it has stopped my beta2 plans, it sounds that it stopped your beta1 plans or are you just pushing the engine to the limits with those maps! hope there is a quick fix to turn it off till they get it working like it is on their machines I would think it would have held up the release of beta2 if it was like it is on ours, you think? Maybe on their LCD its not noticable maybe they won't see it in my video!

#13 lol looks like nasty regular lod, I understand lod but "dream" for the cards to get so fast its not necessary or wave tracing gets invented!

#14 You can alleviate the blotchy shadows by changing the logWeight(I set to 1.0) and setting larger splitFadeDistances (I set 10 10 10 10 ).

As for the terrain edit mesh marker being offset I can not reproduce that error.

Edit: It still becomes blotchy shadowed with large square sizes.

#15 Yeah, none of the terrain settings alleviate the problem if you're trying to make an even average-sized terrain. In Beta 2, even the 256x256x8, which is the standard terrain size from TGE (2x2 km), renders random spots of darkness on the terrain.

Increasing the splitFadeDistances and adjusting logWeight, as suggested, just makes the incorrect shadows cast from nowhere look nicer.. which doesn't really accomplish anything.

I can't reproduce that scenario with the broken geometry either. Could have been a fluke.

The larger terrain also frequently cuts off shadows... shadows cut off suddenly instead of fading in detail and eventually darkness over distance.

*Edit: One more set of screenshots. I think these ones pretty clearly show the two primary symptoms.

First, missing pieces of shadows.

Second, shadows cast from nothing on the side of a hill which directly faces the sun. All hills get this around the base in a ring.

#16 hmm...

I don't think that what I am experiencing; shadowy lines marching across
the terrain infront of the moving player (as seen in the YouTube vid above),
and sometimes large blodges of shadow coming in and out when in a slight dip
in the terrain when looking around (almost like there is something huge above
you floating casting a shadow), has got anything todo with terrain lod.

Using a fresh project of the "FULL" temple, I decided to have a play with
the sun settings > Advanced Lighting.

I found the following basically got rid of the odd terrain shadows:

overDarkFactor 650 300 120 50
ShadowDistance 2500
shadowSoftness 0.25
logWeight 0.89
splitFadeDistances 10 20 30 40

The biggest drawback of the above is small objects cast a very weak shadows.
FPS seemed unchanged.

I do believe it is something in the advance lighting code, and in this case
with regard to the sun object.

I really am no expert of GFX coding, so my above conclusion is simply best
guess :)

#17 From the video this seems like the same issue Konrad reported on Beta 1 here.
Although in beta 1 i barelly noticed it on my machine and now it's quite noticable.
It was considered not a bug but an issue with properties back then though.
Setting splitFadeDistances from "1 1 1 1" to "12 12 12 12" solved it for him on beta 1.
Haven't tried it on my machine cause i needed to format it due to hardware issues that have been showing up so haven't installed T3D again yet

#18 I see he added a video after I read his thread. Yea deffintly was in beta 1 too.

#19 Hewster: I'm also experiencing the blotchy moving bits from the video. The shots I'm showing are a more advanced version of this problem demonstrated on an 8x8 km terrain (file, new terrain, flat, 1024, squareSize 8)

Luis: Yeah, you could disguise it in Beta 1 by changing the LoD split distances. The effect was far less severe on 2x2km terrains in Beta 1, so it was easier to hide it.

Edit: And yeah, www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/90755 is the same thing.

#20 FIX: www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/92629