Can you PLEASE fix the shadows already?

[DjVortex]

Update 18, which was published in February of 2024, completely broke the shadows of the game, which were working just fine prior to that. The shadows would clip in very ugly ways when viewed from particular distances, they would turn on and off at random, and at the time the absolutely worst was that at certain angles and certain situations they would flicker, which was highly annoying.

The flickering was (for the most part) fixed in subsequent updates, but the shadow clipping was never fixed.

Could you please, PLEASE, finally fix that? I'm very patient and very understanding when it comes to the workload and difficulty of developing such a huge game, but this is one of the most major visual glitches of the game that happens constantly and is so utterly annoying that it actually detracts from the enjoyability of the game. I know that there are myriads and myriads of other bugs that are on the line and haven't been fixed for years, but this one affects everybody, is highly visible, highly annoying and, what's worst, it used to work correctly and was later broken in an update. Thus, we know that the shadows could work if you just fixed them.

Frankly, I have put up with the shadow glitches for over a year, but it's finally eating on my patience. It's so utterly annoying. Could you PLEASE do something about it?

To clarify:

First screenhot shows shadow glitching when flying over terrain, particularly when the star is close to the horizon: Sometimes random patches of shadow just disappear for a second or two, before appearing again. This same glitch exhibits itself in all kinds of other ways as well, but this is one of the most glaring ones.

Second and third screenshots: Shadows are often clipped to some strange clipping plane at a certain distance from the camera: The second screenshot shows a completely working shadow. However, move the camera just a tiny bit back, and you get the third screenshot, with the shadow cut.

 

[thistle]

YES PLEASE Fdev.

It's a genuinely experience ruining problem, for me at least.

It's bad enough I have edited the graphics files to (not very) effectively remove directional shadows, so no shadows for the player, individual rocks, my ship, etc on planets. It becomes smoothish in terms of removing almost all the flickering when approaching or landed, but it's PS2 level graphics.

(note: I understand we never do know if you are working on fixing something until it appears in release notes, so hopefully it's something that's on the way....)

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Nothing to fix!

 

[Uthael]

It's a small indie company with new ideas, cut them some slack

 

[g0oglyeyes]

Still flickers for me quite often too, especially when landing on planets and approaching stations.

 

[GroG79]

 

[thistle]

Watch out, there's an ED-209 under your srv.

 

[Rob Galaxy]

they would turn on and off at random

@g0oglyeyes @thistle

You can get rid of the on/off switching of shadows and flickering without any lack in quality, if you set following graphics options:
Directional Shadow Quality LOW
Spot Shadow Quality HIGH
This worked for me with an AMD Graphics Card RX 7800XT

 

[thistle]

@g0oglyeyes @thistle

You can get rid of the on/off switching of shadows and flickering without any lack in quality, if you set following graphics options:
Directional Shadow Quality LOW
Spot Shadow Quality HIGH
This worked for me with an AMD Graphics Card RX 7800XT

Unless something has changed, that doesn't do it. The only way to prevent the flickering shadows on planets is to edit the graphics file and effectively prevent the directional shadows from working, removing them (and making the graphics obviously worse). I will try and do a video and show people what I mean later.

(again, assuming something hasn't changed and I'm wrong, but I have mine changed in the files)

 

[thistle]

Just for information, what I did came from the good work by Morbad and darki_404 in this thread:

Shadow Quality

I tend to find Morbad's workarounds at least make the shadows less like a techno house party than otherwise. There are some drawbacks for on foot immersion with soft shadow for sure, but it's better stability of the shadows from popping off and on everywhere else. It's kind of abysmal that a bug...

forums.frontier.co.uk

I took darki_404's changes, used the changes just for planet approach and planet surfaces in the Ultra section of the graphics file, so that I could just leave all settings to ultra in the game settings but directional shadows for planet surfaces and approach would actually be off:

Shadow Quality

I copied the section from the new file in today's update and made it look very similar to this one posted above. The result is effectively turning off directional shadows completely. I prefer it like this both flat and VR this is the file to disable directional shadows 1024...

forums.frontier.co.uk

I'm not sure this makes much sense in the way i've explained it. i think the graphics file has actually changed since March but I keep using those changes. I'll do a wee video to show what I mean when I'm in game, I can see the difference by just switching from all High settings to all Ultra. On approach and flying over the surface there is no flickering and giant shadow assault on my eyes, but clearly it's worse in terms of missing shadows. But if they aren't there they can't ruin the game any more. It's much more relaxing.

 

[Alec Turner]

The flickering shadows remains my single biggest issue with Elite Dangerous. The way shadows on the landscape turn on and off based on the player's position, the way they flicker in ways that I’m sure must be a problem for people with photosensitivity issues, the way the edges of shadows simmer and seethe. It's absolutely horrible, spoils the beauty of the game and constantly ruins attempts to record good looking videos. It's not like this is some kind of quality gripe, something is fundamentally wrong.

Maybe vote on this issue if you haven’t already.

Issue Tracker

issues.frontierstore.net

 

[DjVortex]

The flickering shadows remains my single biggest issue with Elite Dangerous. The way shadows on the landscape turn on and off based on the player's position, the way they flicker in ways that I’m sure must be a problem for people with photosensitivity issues, the way the edges of shadows simmer and seethe. It's absolutely horrible, spoils the beauty of the game and constantly ruins attempts to record good looking videos. It's not like this is some kind of quality gripe, something is fundamentally wrong.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same kind of "flickering".

Currently when you are eg. flying over the surface at a certain altitude, the shadows of terrain features sometimes disappear and then appear a moment later, probably based on their distance to the camera.

However, this isn't the "flicker" I was referring to in my original post. After Update 18 many places, especially on foot, had the shadows flicker something like 10-20 times per second, constantly, when viewed from certain distances and angles. It was not only extraordinarily annoying, but outright epilepsy-inducing for those who have the condition.

That flickering has been fixed for the most part. What remains is the occasional single flickers that happen depending on distance (at particular distances a shadow may just turn off, and when the distance increases or decreases again, it may turn back on. This may even work in patches, like in the first screenshot I posted in my original post.)

(Also shadows cutting off at certain distances, especially when on foot, but otherwise too, which was also introduces in the same update, also remains. This is what the third screenshot is demonstrating.)

 

[Morbad]

I'm fairly convinced the rapid flickering and the visible rectangular cascade are symptoms of the same underlying issue. Indeed, I suspect the later is the direct result of a botched fix for the former and that the former was caused by some kind of geometry culling performance pass around U12. This was mostly, but not fully addressed in U14 then reintroduced in U18.

@g0oglyeyes @thistle

You can get rid of the on/off switching of shadows and flickering without any lack in quality, if you set following graphics options:
Directional Shadow Quality LOW
Spot Shadow Quality HIGH
This worked for me with an AMD Graphics Card RX 7800XT

Low quality directional shadows does not completely resolve this issue, but it does knock shadow map resolution down to 1024*1024 and the number of shadow cascades down to two...which completely destroys shadow quality in most areas.

What effect it does have on these shadow bugs is mostly down to all of those missing cascades.

 

[thistle]

Lets try this. 3 gifs:

• High Spot shadows, low Directional (Rob's settings) - not bad, but still shadows jump in and out
• Ultra Spot shadows, High Directional for comparison - really bad, and even worse with Ultra directional
• Ultra Spot shadows, darki_404's edit to graphics file to remove directional (for planet surfaces & planet approach only) - no jumping at all but obviously missing rock/player/ship shadows. Makes flying over planet surface so much better. IMO.

https://imgur.com/a/X2oel4X

Source: https://imgur.com/a/X2oel4X

 

[Morbad]

Lets try this. 3 gifs:

• High Spot shadows, low Directional (Rob's settings) - not bad, but still shadows jump in and out
• Ultra Spot shadows, High Directional for comparison - really bad, and even worse with Ultra directional
• Ultra Spot shadows, darki_404's edit to graphics file to remove directional (for planet surfaces & planet approach only) - no jumping at all but obviously missing rock/player/ship shadows. Makes flying over planet surface so much better. IMO.

https://imgur.com/a/X2oel4X

Source: https://imgur.com/a/X2oel4X

You can just list the directional shadows here as there are no spot shadows present.

Spot shadows are cast by things like ship headlights, lamps, and infantry flashlights.

 

[DjVortex]

Lets try this. 3 gifs:

I'm not completely sure that what you are showing there is exactly the same kind of shadow glitching that my original post is about. To me those look more like a LOD thingie, where the game fades out some shadows that are too far from the camera. Not completely dissimilar to texture or terrain geometry popping. (Looks bad, of course, but I'm not sure it's the same glitch, or even a glitch at all.)

In my original post I'm talking about two glitches (that might or might not actually be the same glitch):

One is that shadows just disappear for a moment, depending on distance, and then pop back in. Sometimes they do this in very specific portions of the surface geometry. This is what my first screenshot demonstrates: While flying over the landscape with the star very close to the horizon, sometimes random shadow patches disappear, and then a second or two later appear again. (This is not the only way in which this glitch exhibits itself, but it's very glaring.)

The second one relates to shadows clipping to some strange clipping plane when they are at a certain distance from the camera. It's particularly prevalent on foot, but also happens while in the ship (it seems to be dependent on the camera angle, which is different in these two modes.) This is what my second and third screenshots are demonstrating: The second screenshot shows a completely working shadow. However, move the camera just a tiny bit back, and suddenly the shadow is cut (third screenshot).

 

[gbjbaanb]

I made a short vid - edited and reduced in size for social media, but you can see the problem. This was 2 weeks ago with the up-to-date updates.

https://imgur.com/a/miCzdI2

the forum embed isn't working for me - so the source to it, on imgur, is here.

 

[thistle]

I'm not completely sure that what you are showing there is exactly the same kind of shadow glitching that my original post is about. To me those look more like a LOD thingie, where the game fades out some shadows that are too far from the camera. Not completely dissimilar to texture or terrain geometry popping. (Looks bad, of course, but I'm not sure it's the same glitch, or even a glitch at all.)

In my original post I'm talking about two glitches (that might or might not actually be the same glitch):

One is that shadows just disappear for a moment, depending on distance, and then pop back in. Sometimes they do this in very specific portions of the surface geometry. This is what my first screenshot demonstrates: While flying over the landscape with the star very close to the horizon, sometimes random shadow patches disappear, and then a second or two later appear again. (This is not the only way in which this glitch exhibits itself, but it's very glaring.)

The second one relates to shadows clipping to some strange clipping plane when they are at a certain distance from the camera. It's particularly prevalent on foot, but also happens while in the ship (it seems to be dependent on the camera angle, which is different in these two modes.) This is what my second and third screenshots are demonstrating: The second screenshot shows a completely working shadow. However, move the camera just a tiny bit back, and suddenly the shadow is cut (third screenshot).

All of those problems are in the directional shadows, because all those problems are removed when I disable completely directional shadows. What within the directional shadows is causing the multiple different problem I don't know, but all of the issues you mention are removed when I do this. LOD, or the two glitches you mention, I don't know what is causing what but they are removed when I remove the directional shadows (changing low high ultra doesn't do it).

BUT of course rather than those glitches appearing, the shadows themselves simply don't appear, rather than glitching.

My reason for doing it is how relaxing and smooth the game is on planets now. The immersion is not constantly and violently ruined by all the issues you mention, which I completely agree with, and any others the directional shadows are causing.

 

[thistle]

You can just list the directional shadows here as there are no spot shadows present.

Spot shadows are cast by things like ship headlights, lamps, and infantry flashlights.

Yep, I'm just mentioning what I had the two shadow settings set to for info, as Rob mentioned setting high/low for spot/directional as his solution.

 

[thistle]

It's broken, basically