Sepermeru tavern lights flicker

Game mode: Single-player / PC
Type of issue: Misc
Server type: Local Single-player
Region: n/a


The lighting in Sepermeru tavern has problems and flickers depending on player’s position. Observed it happening in two places. Attaching video for reference.


Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:

  1. Go to Sepermeru tavern
  2. Look up at the ceiling, especially the spot above the dancers. and the opposite side
  3. Start moving around still looking at the ceiling

Best regards,
Ramazon

1 Like

I’m unable to repeat this result under any graphic setting. What it looks like it’s doing is loading and unloading the Light Maps, but I can’t repeat the bug.

Needs more information. What’s your hardware setup, video driver version, as well as current graphic settings. Are you using any mods (yes really, this could make a big difference depending on what the mod does or accidentally has saved in it’s contents)?

Morning. Here goes:

Windows10
GeForce GTX 980
Driver ver 25.21.14.1735 (it may be outdated, I will try updating it and check)

Settings:
20190619075952_1

Mods:
Lumbermill and Mining
SFXmod - soundFX for exiles
Strays Thralls
Exile Architect
Kerozards Paragon Leveling - a Multigun Refresh (I knew I recalled your name from somewhere! Good mod, thanks for updating it)
CharEditLite
Ishmael’s Lighting Gallery (it adds radium standing and wall braziers, not sure it would affect other lights in game)

It could. Depending on if blueprints were altered. Mod “looks” fine to me via the workshop page, but do me a favor just to rule it out and unload the mod, backup your save, and revisit the area. May want to try doing a fresh save with 0 mods too (just rename your Saved folder to something else, Saved - Main Game, or whatever, then rename it back to Saved once you are ready to resume).

I doubt it’s an outdated driver (cause life is never that easy heh heh), but ya go ahead and give that an update “just in case” to rule it out if nothing else.

Are you using any custom ini tweaks? In particular anything to do with LOD distances?

1 Like

Tried:

  • disabling Ishmael’s lighting gallery
  • updated drivers
  • started a new save with no mods

The problem still persists. No I haven’t modified my ini file in any way.

Ya now I’m getting it when putting Shadows on High. Which for the record, I did try before, but I forgot to unfreeze time of day so the “Sun” was probably in the wrong spot.

@Ignasi The steps to get the bug to re-occur is to set the General Shadows to High, everything else doesn’t impact it.

Someday I’ll be an expert at this stuff, but here’s my understanding as it stands today (self taught nonsense mostly ha ha).

The Shadow Graphic settings does a few things. One of those things is a distance parameter to determine when to load the Light Map generated Shadows into view. Basically it checks to see if your character is within a certain distance of LOD 0 (pretty sure it’s checking for LOD 0, but I could be wrong.) LOD 0 means, load the highest quality whatever based on graphic settings of the player (in your case, 1K shadow textures, ultra is 2K).

The problem is that, to save on performance, many objects in the game are set to only load LOD 0 when a character is very close. An example of this is to wonder into your favorite NPC camp that has flags on poles and watch how long it takes before they start flapping in the wind. Normally shadows like that wouldn’t be so jarring, but the way the Tavern is set up, what you see is flickering, is just the game loading and unloading the Shadows generated via Light Map (baked Shadows. I could go into a long description of what live versus baked Shadows is, but that’s another subject matter entirely). Set the quality to Ultra, you character enters the Tavern and you would be non the wiser because the maximum distance to load the good stuff is further out.

How to fix? I mean Funcom could set the ranges differently, but they are kinda set up that way for a reason (performance). Maybe they could make the static meshes used in the Tavern not be so aggressively short on their LODs, but those static meshes (buildings) are all over the place in Sepemeru. Changing one, means changing them all, which means players with those graphic settings see their performance suffer.

Anyhoo, that’s my understanding as it stands today.

3 Likes

Hey there,

Thanks for all the info, sending it to our team so they can look into it :slight_smile:

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