Horizontal Lines/Stripes in Caucasus Mountains

[dresoccer4]

hey all -

 

just wanted to report a strange graphical behavior that I hadn't seen before today.

 

i'm playing in the up to date 2.5 version. mission 2 of the High Stakes campaign. flying through the Caucasus mountains at 6.30am summer time. so the sun is very low and working its way through the peaks.

 

all of the sudden i noticed many thick horizontal lines/stripes jutting through the distant mountains that had been lit up by the sun. i've been playing DCS for a while and hadn't seen this before. i attached a couple screenshots.they sort of move and fluctuate when i rotate the camera. pretty funky.

 

is this a known thing?

 

[ATTACH]179701[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]179702[/ATTACH]

[cf188]

It’s look like tree shadow projected on a virtual ground level floor and you see it like you are under this floor.

[dresoccer4]

i almost crashed!

it made the optical illusion like i was about to run into a ton of power lines. i've literally had nightmares of this happening to me in my cessna :cry:

[Sideslip]

Those are what we call "flat shadows". The low sun is casting long shadows on the trees. Those shadows do not conform to the shape of the terrain and are sticking out on the horizontal plane. If you view them from above it looks fine, from bellow... well you can see that. If you set terrain shadows to default and have shadow quality set to low, med or high, the closest trees will have proper shadows that don't stick out like that. However, even on highest setting the trees that are just a tiny bit further away will still do that.

 

I don't know if ED can make it so that flat shadows are orientated according to the angle of the terrain the object is placed on. Even if they can, that won't 100% eliminate it as it's possible for the trees to be at the top of a hill and then have the shadow stick up off the peak. I don't know how much of a performance impact that would have either. Or it could be that their shadow engine doesn't know how to deal with being viewed from bellow. In the meantime, avoid flying bellow trees during dawn/dusk if it bothers you too much.

[Strut]

i almost crashed!

it made the optical illusion like i was about to run into a ton of power lines. i've literally had nightmares of this happening to me in my cessna :cry:

 

 

 

Funniest post ive read all day :lol: :thumbup:

[dresoccer4]

.... In the meantime, avoid flying bellow trees during dawn/dusk if it bothers you too much.

 

thanks for the detailed description. i had a feeling it was something to do with the early morning sun angle. does switching off flat shadows have much a performance hit?

 

Funniest post ive read all day :lol: :thumbup:

 

whoever invented power lines is a monster. completely unnecessary things in my opinion :poster_ban:

[Sideslip]

thanks for the detailed description. i had a feeling it was something to do with the early morning sun angle. does switching off flat shadows have much a performance hit?

 

From my other somewhat incomplete thread:https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3388898#post3388898

- Terrain Shadows

 

Didn't we just cover this? Nope, this only affects shadows caused by terrain objects.

 

Off | Flat | Default:

 

So what's happening here is the shadows caused by buildings and trees is being either forced off, forced to flat or left at the default which is whatever setting you chose for shadows. Basically it's letting you have a lower quality shadow on the terrain while still having nice shadows in the cockpit, aircraft surfaces and other vehicles. Has a big effect on performance. Minor increase in vram that may just be coincidence. After all, 90% of the shadows you will see are terrain shadows. 5% and 20% respectively.

 

Trees again, and we know what to expect this time:

 

Massive performance gain dropping to flat shadows and you could hardly tell the difference. 5% and 33% respectively. Lots of shadows... lots of hamsters need to be fed.

 

 

Back to a town:

 

And we see again that the default shadows (which are set to high) are no different than flat shadows. 4% and 10% respectively.