Cloud shadows moving with plane

[mrrcsound]

Has anyone seen this?  It looks like the cloud shadows are attached to the plane rather than to the ground.  When the plane is pitched and rolled, the shadows follow along, instead of staying in the relative position on the surface.  So what you get in effect is fast moving shadows across the hills and valleys, which is really strange to see.

Anyone know of a fix?

 

[sundog]

No, I haven't seen that. Is that a third party plane, or do you have any other add-ons that might be manipulating the view somehow?

Our next release does handle cloud shadows a little bit differently, so there's a chance it will help once it is released.

[mrrcsound]

26 minutes ago, sundog said:

No, I haven't seen that. Is that a third party plane, or do you have any other add-ons that might be manipulating the view somehow?

Our next release does handle cloud shadows a little bit differently, so there's a chance it will help once it is released.

It is the stock Cessna 172.  I do have a few add-ons, nothing witch should interfere.  I tried without reshade thinking that may be the issue, but no difference.  Ortho, but that should not do it. 3jFPS, I can try and remove that.  Removed most everything else.  Would a log file or anything help?

When will the next release be out?  Any chance I could get an advanced preview, see if it fixes the problem?

[rawdmon]

This is the same kind of effect that I see when outside of the plane and moving my head around in VR. The clouds wander in the direction that I'm moving my head then move back to where they were after. It's like whatever calculation that is being done to draw them is also taking in to account the movement of the headset / camera and the plane position. It feels like this needs to be simplified somehow to make the results more static (not prone to wandering like this). 

[sundog]

19 hours ago, rawdmon said:

This is the same kind of effect that I see when outside of the plane and moving my head around in VR. The clouds wander in the direction that I'm moving my head then move back to where they were after. It's like whatever calculation that is being done to draw them is also taking in to account the movement of the headset / camera and the plane position. It feels like this needs to be simplified somehow to make the results more static (not prone to wandering like this). 

What he's seeing looks more pronounced than the known issue in VR. It's as though the shadows are directly tied to his view angle, whereas the other issue is a result of the shadows being a frame or two behind (I think)

I don't know when the next release will go out... we have a release candidate built, but further testing / packaging / distribution is out of my hands. I will test this more today though to be sure.

Edited November 3, 2020 by sundog

[sundog]

23 hours ago, mrrcsound said:

It is the stock Cessna 172.  I do have a few add-ons, nothing witch should interfere.  I tried without reshade thinking that may be the issue, but no difference.  Ortho, but that should not do it. 3jFPS, I can try and remove that.  Removed most everything else.  Would a log file or anything help?

When will the next release be out?  Any chance I could get an advanced preview, see if it fixes the problem?

Well it might be helpful to know your graphics settings (HDR on/off, Vulkan on/off, AA on/off)

As a test I've gone into cockpit view and looked out the side window, and waggled the wings in my current development build here. Shadows seems rock solid to me. Tried with HDR on and off.

Edited November 3, 2020 by sundog

[mrrcsound]

5 hours ago, sundog said:

Well it might be helpful to know your graphics settings (HDR on/off, Vulkan on/off, AA on/off)

As a test I've gone into cockpit view and looked out the side window, and waggled the wings in my current development build here. Shadows seems rock solid to me. Tried with HDR on and off.

Tried it all.  HDR on and off, Vulkan on and OGL.  In OGL the shadows actually float in the air.  AA off all the way to 4X FSAA, that is as high as I can go before the FPS starts dipping below 30 with 3 screens.  

I pulled out everything last night all add ins, all lua scripts, all OSM data, all airport data, all Ortho imagery, was basically back to vanilla, and it still does it.  So I am stumped.

Tried a fresh install this morning, but I lost all my joystick and panel calibrations, tried to put them back in, but was unable to control the plane.  Still trying.  I will let you know how I make out in a bit with a completely fresh install.

System is an i7 7700k, GTX 1080, 32gb, SSD 

 

Edit:  I just was able to get the fresh install of X-Plane 11.5 up and running to test out.

Completely fresh, no installs, nothing except an install of SkyMaxx.  It does the exact same thing with the shadows.  So it is not another add on or anything causing an interference.

Edited November 3, 2020 by mrrcsound

[Cameron]

Can you please test this without the other two displays? I'm just curious to see what happens without them running.

[mrrcsound]

1 minute ago, Cameron said:

Can you please test this without the other two displays? I'm just curious to see what happens without them running.

Yep, give me a few minutes.

 

[mrrcsound]

I tested it on a single monitor, and it works!  The shadows look prefect, follow the hills and valleys, and look great!  So what can be going on with 3 monitors?  You said others are using it fine with multi monitor setups.

[Cameron]

40 minutes ago, mrrcsound said:

So what can be going on with 3 monitors?  You said others are using it fine with multi monitor setups.

Ya, that's a mystery to me. But, we have seen situations similar to this where some VR headsets run the software visually different than others. Makes for one heck of a de-bug process.

 

My thought to have you try this came from thinking about the VR comment above. VR is technically two screens. Now to figure out why...

 

That's @sundog's territory.

[mrrcsound]

Well, it is a step in the right direction.  I do have a Rift S plugged in, but the Oculus software is not running.  I will unplug it, just to see if that makes any difference.  Hopefully we can find a cause and get it fixed. 

[Cameron]

Just now, mrrcsound said:

I do have a Rift S plugged in, but the Oculus software is not running.  I will unplug it, just to see if that makes any difference.  Hopefully we can find a cause and get it fixed.

Worth a shot!

[mrrcsound]

27 minutes ago, Cameron said:

Worth a shot!

No luck with removing the Rift.  I can confirm that any single monitor will work alone, but any 2 will cause the problem.  Not sure what else to try at this point.

[mrrcsound]

Any further ideas guys?  I love the clouds, but with the shadows the way they are, it is just not useable.

 

[sundog]

1 hour ago, mrrcsound said:

Any further ideas guys?  I love the clouds, but with the shadows the way they are, it is just not useable.

 

Disabling cloud shadows in the SMP configuration is of course an option for now. I'll try testing on two monitors here and see what happens.

 

EDIT: Yup, I got it to happen. Looking into it.

Edited November 4, 2020 by sundog

[mrrcsound]

12 minutes ago, sundog said:

Disabling cloud shadows in the SMP configuration is of course an option for now. I'll try testing on two monitors here and see what happens.

Thanks!  I appreciate you looking into it.

[sundog]

1 hour ago, mrrcsound said:

Thanks!  I appreciate you looking into it.

Alright, I think I have a fix coded up here.

The underlying issue is that X-Plane tells us when we're drawing different eyes in VR, but it doesn't tell us when we're drawing different screens on a multi-monitor display. This led to the shadow map intended for one monitor getting used on other ones where it doesn't match up.

I figured out a workaround, though. Our next release should have this fixed.

 

[mrrcsound]

5 minutes ago, sundog said:

Alright, I think I have a fix coded up here.

The underlying issue is that X-Plane tells us when we're drawing different eyes in VR, but it doesn't tell us when we're drawing different screens on a multi-monitor display. This led to the shadow map intended for one monitor getting used on other ones where it doesn't match up.

I figured out a workaround, though. Our next release should have this fixed.

 

Sweet!!!  You are the man!  Thank you so much!  Looking forward to it!

 

[idefixgallier]

I don't no if the mentioned "next release" is the most recent one, but i do fly only VR and if i tick "cloud shadows" in the configure clouds options, nothing changes. 

Even with the slider set to 1.

Are cloud shadows deactivated in VR at the moment?

 

Kind regards 

Martin 

[Cameron]

59 minutes ago, idefixgallier said:

I don't no if the mentioned "next release" is the most recent one, but i do fly only VR and if i tick "cloud shadows" in the configure clouds options, nothing changes. 

Even with the slider set to 1.

Are cloud shadows deactivated in VR at the moment?

 

Kind regards 

Martin 

Nothing has been changed since this was posted, so no. That said, in general, VR in X-Plane is a literal crap shoot for rendering plugins depending on the headset you have.

[BusdriverSA]

On 11/4/2020 at 7:09 PM, sundog said:

Alright, I think I have a fix coded up here.

The underlying issue is that X-Plane tells us when we're drawing different eyes in VR, but it doesn't tell us when we're drawing different screens on a multi-monitor display. This led to the shadow map intended for one monitor getting used on other ones where it doesn't match up.

I figured out a workaround, though. Our next release should have this fixed.

 

Hi,

 

Was this issue ever resolved? I have the same shadow problem on my 3 monitor setup and it drives me nuts. Sure I can turn the shadows off but that defeats the whole point. I love Skymaxx, especially the thunderstorms but this shadow problem is a bit of an issue. I'm using the latest X-plane and Skymaxx V5.1.

 

If the default cloud shadows can work perfectly, then surely so can these?

 

Cheers,

 

BusdriverSA

[Cameron]

3 hours ago, BusdriverSA said:

Was this issue ever resolved? I have the same shadow problem on my 3 monitor setup and it drives me nuts. Sure I can turn the shadows off but that defeats the whole point. I love Skymaxx, especially the thunderstorms but this shadow problem is a bit of an issue. I'm using the latest X-plane and Skymaxx V5.1.

As I recall it was removed because the fix broke more than it solved.

3 hours ago, BusdriverSA said:

If the default cloud shadows can work perfectly, then surely so can these?

The difference is the default clouds have unlimited access to X-Plane. They are coded by the developers of the product for which they live.

We are limited to a sandbox within that playground. In other words, no, your logic is flawed (unfortunately).

[BusdriverSA]

12 hours ago, Cameron said:

We are limited to a sandbox within that playground. In other words, no, your logic is flawed (unfortunately).

My logic could only be considered flawed if one was aware of these limitations, but since I am neither a developer or programmer, and merely an end-user hobbyist, I was not. Thanks for the explanation.

Is there any news of a fix in the pipeline?

[Cameron]

5 hours ago, BusdriverSA said:

My logic could only be considered flawed if one was aware of these limitations, but since I am neither a developer or programmer, and merely an end-user hobbyist, I was not. Thanks for the explanation.

Is there any news of a fix in the pipeline?

Your logic was flawed because you wrongly surmised that if default can do it we can too.

No, there is not a fix in the works. We've done best we can on this one within the bounds we're given (unless you want to remove some monitors). Sorry!