Shadows disappear in ~100 meters around me

[CMDR Darth Vater]

Hi all,

I stand in the shadow of a mountain, which covers the low sun. I have a station in front of me, it should be covered in the dark shadows of a mountain, too. The station however is brightly illuminated by the sun covered of that mountain. If I move closer the shadows move with me as it seems the shadow is generated only in a circle of 100 metres around me. When I approach the station laying full bright in sunlight the shadows start to cover the station till it's completely covered in the dark.

It even is like a cone, so when I turn my head to left or right the shadows move away from the buildings to my looking direction.

Only when set in settings from ultra to low the circle of shadow seems to be bigger. Is that a crap workaround implemented without being tested? I wonder for what issue?

Here some images:

That kills absolutely every immersion.

The same when I see the the shadows under my ship disppear or appear.

 

[Arioch]

I’m surprised you’re only just seeing this - and it’s the second highest voted for issue on the tracker:

Issue Tracker

issues.frontierstore.net

Shadows are broken, have been for a while (…and a lot longer in VR!)

 

[CMDR Darth Vater]

To me the issue isn't the flickering. It's the very small circle around me. I recognised that with my ship some time ago. But now that happens also here on stations.

In 2015 I was able to fly or drive over a planet and have a fine and crisp shadow. 10 years later it looks like in the early 2000s.

And yes, can be, that this issue did appear some time ago already. Blame my busy life which prevents me from playing.

 

[DjVortex]

Update 18 somehow changed the shadows, causing extremely annoying flickering in certain situations. They later fixed the flickering issue, but they did not fix the issue of the shadows being clipped at certain distances (which was also introduced with that update).

It has been a really annoying bug since. Before update 18 shadows worked perfectly. After the update they have never worked properly. For some inexplicable reasons they have never reverted the shadow code back to pre-update-18.

 

[CMDR Darth Vater]

I really would like to get a community manager's statement, if anyone from FDev is working on the topic. It breaks every immersion. The fast flickering on some occasions around you is even more disturbing.

 

[Morbad]

All symptoms of the same underlying issue, which was originally introduced way back in Update 12, fixed in Update 14, then reintroduced in Update 18.

Probably not going to get any official statement until they think they've fixed it again.

 

[CMDR Darth Vater]

Yes, the only thing I can think of is to highlight it again and again. I've never had problems like this since the game started over 10 years ago. Frontier collecting money and then ignoring issues like this (for which I believe many problem tickets are already open) is a huge pain in the rear. I'm willing to support and pay a lot for their updates and DLCs. But this issue is so obviously a well documented bug, and then to realise that no one cares about it is killing my patience.