Persistent Terrain Reflections bugs

[PurdueKev]

For quite some time, I have been seeing persistent bugs in how terrain reflections are displayed. This is either terrain reflections that are dissociated from their corresponding terrain feature and then "shift" back at certain viewing angles, as well as odd nonexistent terrain features reflecting on the water surface at different altitudes.

I can confirm that turning terrain reflections OFF are the only thing that eliminates the issue (and of course also eliminates the desired terrain reflections).

I have seen this mentioned at different times in this forum, but it never seems to be ackowledged as a bug even though it is clear different users report similar phenomena. I have also noticed this in certain posted youtube videos where if you look carefully, you can see these anomalies.

Here are examples:








That's just a representative sampling, I have several dozen screenshots with similar quirks.

These sets show what happens with terrain reflections ON and OFF, respectively:






This was present on previous installations of P3D, and now on a fresh clean installation of P3D with the latest hotfixes included (i.e. NOT patched). This has also persisted through a few different Nvidia driver versions, which were installed clean and included the usual steps to delete previous data (empty shader folder, etc). The bugs are not resolved by any of the other combinations of display settings, for example water detail, bathymetry, tesselation, terrain or object shadows, etc. I have seen this both with the stock P3D water and land textures and also with REX Texture Direct and Orbx. I have no other texture modifications installed.

Are other users seeing this behavior? And can someone from LM confirm whether this is an acknowledged bug to be addressed?

Thanks!

Kevin

Pertinent info:
Nvidia drivers 376.33 (but also observed on earlier versions)
Prepar3D version: 3.4.18.19745
Operating system: Windows 10 Home
All add-ons installed (applications, scenery, vehicles, etc.): Orbx regions and Global/Vector/LC, Rex Texture Direct, ActiveSky 2016 and ASCA
Hardware (graphics card, CPU, RAM, displays, etc.): i7-6700k 4.6ghz OC / EVGA GTX 980Ti SC AC2.0+ 6GB / Dell 27" S2716DG 2560x1440 GSync / Asus Z170-AR mobo / 16GB DDR4 RAM / Samsung 950 256GB (OS) & Samsung 850 500GB (P3D) SSD / WD Caviar Black 1TB & 4TB HDDs
Changes made to your system – overlocking, graphics accelerators (NVIDIA Inspector), debuggers: OC at 4.6
Changes to Prepar3D's settings or configuration files: none
Crash logs or error messages: none

[Mike Sierra]

Hi Kevin,

Thank You for putting this 'feature' on topic again.
The last thread, which mentioned this was "problems after HF2", which was 'thankfully' closed without any nearer mentioning or any kind of answer concerning these 'mirror-shifting' behaviour of water reflections.

The phenomenon isn't hard to reproduce, it's more a matter of becoming aware of it. But as soon as you've noticed the reflection of a mountain in a water body first nearly completly missing, but then suddenly kind of unfolding like the opening of a book, then you'll see it anywhere near any shore. The first times I stumbled across it I thought it to be an illusion, but it occurs again and again - but only ONCE for a certain piece of shore (doing a 360° turn to move past the 'tilting' moment, does not work - at least I haven't managed yet.

Maybe there's an answer - or even better: a solution to that, somewhere 'out there'?

Michael.

[Martyson]

Hi Michael,

"The last thread, which mentioned this was "problems after HF2", which was 'thankfully' closed without any nearer mentioning or any kind of answer concerning these 'mirror-shifting' behaviour of water reflections."


The author of that topic said:
"I had to edit the xml till i found the bad section and everything works !"

So, the topic was then closed.

[Mike Sierra]

Hi Vaughan,
But he also wrote
"I see that the reflections on water surface are not on correct plan and are shifting down at some moments to go to the right height."
Which obviously was overseen before closing the topic. The solution concerning the greyed-out menu items was solved.
But nevertheless - here are 2 other users reporting the problem of shifting reflecions.

Michael.

[Martyson]

Hi Vaughan,
But he also wrote
"I see that the reflections on water surface are not on correct plan and are shifting down at some moments to go to the right height."
Which obviously was overseen before closing the topic. The solution concerning the greyed-out menu items was solved.
But nevertheless - here are 2 other users reporting the problem of shifting reflecions.

Michael.

Easy solution ... just one topic per problem post.

But, when the author of the topic says all fixed he is a happy camper.
Has he been back?

[Mike Sierra]

Easy solution ... just one topic per problem post.

But, when the author of the topic says all fixed he is a happy camper.
Has he been back?

;o) - Back - to a closed topic?
Let's get back to the topic of THIS thread. Any suggestion?
Michael.

[Martyson]

Easy solution ... just one topic per problem post.

But, when the author of the topic says all fixed he is a happy camper.
Has he been back?

;o) - Back - to a closed topic?
Let's get back to the topic of THIS thread. Any suggestion?
Michael.

If the OP had follow up questions he could open another post.
No problem with that.

As for shadows, sometimes I have them ON sometimes OFF.
But on normal flights from inside the VC looking around (panel scan / traffic scan / weather scan ) I would not be paying much attention to the terrain/cloud/vegetation shadow itself. Just the overall situation during flight.

[Mike Sierra]

Vaughan,
If you had read the starting post here thorougly, you could have noticed that Kevin wrote about REFLECTIONS - not shadows.

For quite some time, I have been seeing persistent bugs in how terrain reflections are displayed. This is either terrain reflections that are dissociated from their corresponding terrain feature and then "shift" back at certain viewing angles, as well as odd nonexistent terrain features reflecting on the water surface at different altitudes.
.....

There's a mighty difference between shadows and reflections - at least in true life.
Michael.

[Martyson]

"If you had read the starting post here thorougly, you could have noticed that Kevin wrote about REFLECTIONS - not shadows."


I was not referring to this post by Kevin in my replies.


I was referring to this post you were referring to.
"Thank You for putting this 'feature' on topic again.
The last thread, which mentioned this was "problems after HF2", which was 'thankfully' closed without any nearer mentioning or any kind of answer concerning these 'mirror-shifting' behaviour of water reflections."

[RESOLVED] problems after HF2 here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2&t=123414


which said:
"After upgrading to HF2, I have options that are grey and unselectable : Time preview, Water detail...
I see that the reflections on water surface are not on correct plan and are shifting down at some moments to go to the right height."



I did here say "As for shadows, sometimes I have them ON sometimes OFF.
But on normal flights from inside the VC looking around (panel scan / traffic scan / weather scan ) I would not be paying much attention to the terrain/cloud/vegetation shadow itself. Just the overall situation during flight."


That was my error.
I should have said ""As for reflections, sometimes I have them ON sometimes OFF.
But on normal flights from inside the VC looking around (panel scan / traffic scan / weather scan ) I would not be paying much attention to the terrain/cloud/vegetation reflections. Just the overall situation during flight."

[PurdueKev]

The reasons I am trying to highlight this phenomenon (that looks to be a significant bug with terrain reflections):

- I am curious how many other users see this; are people just not noticing or is this something affecting only some users (i.e. maybe it is driver-related)?

- Since it appears we may be nearing the end of further development of v3, it would be disappointing if this (assuming it is a bug) is left unresolved. I would be reluctant to embrace/adopt a new version of the platform if there are still bugs from the previous version that are never addressed.

This isn't just an aesthetic issue, because one could say in that case "just turn them off if they bug you" - water reflections are one of the things (along with shadows) that provide real-life-analog visual cues for altitude/speed/attitude. It also messes with the sense of immersion when these weird artifacts show up.

[Gabriel1501]

I am suffering from the same issue and found no solution. I moved from FSX to P3d because of the new shadow and light/reflection options and find my self in a situation where shuting them all down seems to be the only way to fly with no visual bugs.

You can find my topic on it here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2&t=123714

Videos showing some of it (watch Full screen HD!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuhmK2XcnRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5N3fLbwwE

Would like to hear from LM...

Gabriel

[Gabriel1501]

What do I have to do to get some support here from LM?

[bicha36]

This has been discussed before, you are not the only one, however this can not be solved in P3Dv3 without a significant changes in the engine. I'm pretty sure this issues will be fixed in P3Dv4

[AnkH]

I'm pretty sure this issues will be fixed in P3Dv4

Now we know it better, it is not fixed in v4... Sadly this means I have again to turn off terrain reflections at least in areas with a lot of islands...

[AnkH]

Here some screenshots from the FSDG Seychelles scenery illustrating the issue perfectly.

Once without terrain reflections:


Once with terrain reflections on. See the bugged reflections in the red box. I see a similar phenomenon on various island sceneries, from Flightscene Tahiti to ORBX sceneries.


Would be nice, if this could be solved somehow...