GPU Shadow Maps Disappearing Problem

GPU Shadows on - Water is gone


GPU Shadows Off - Water is visible.

An issue has been opened with the IssueTracker. Please consider voting for it if you feel it's a valid and necessary fix request: https://soeissuetracker.com/browse/EQII-19

Hi there -

Two separate issues here that I thought I'd chime in on:

1. I know that for at least two years the setting in Display Options > Advanced > Special Effects > Ambient Occlusion has caused the strange transparent overlay/underlay when GPU shadows are also being used. Turning it off gets rid of that problem. (However as of today it seems not to be working at all, neither are GPU shadows, at least not in GF.)

2. for disappearing ground shadows such as what was shown in the video in Greater Faydark, sometimes Complex Shader Distance has an effect on this - it's what tells the GPU how far out to read and render "details." Try setting it to Max or close to Max and see if that helps.


Finally - I'd like to chime in and say that as of today I get no GPU shadows at all in Faydark even with all the settings turned on.

It's really sad because the shadows add a huge amount of detail and ambience to the zones in the game, especially those with lots of trees. I loved turning on my torch in GF and having very dark shadows even in daytime. Made such a cool experience.


Also I can't seem to log in to JIRA (bug tracker linked above) to Vote for this issue. FYI So I vote here. Please work on this!

Thanks

GF was one of the big problems areas, and I believe they turned off shadows there permanently. I did try both of your suggestions above, but to no avail. The problem still exists. Zek is a good place to go to see some really strange shadow behavior. Regarding the bug tracker, you need to create a new account there to vote/comment on something.

I haven't been in Greater Faydark for a while, but if they turned shadows off there... well that just seems kinda lazy. Hopefully that's just a temporary thing until they get them working better.

I've recently been adventuring out in the Fens of Nathsar, and the shadows there are also really buggy. Now you see them, now you don't type of thing. Water reflections are also very flickery. Not sure what it is with certain zones being worse than others, but Fens is right up there with Greater Faydark.

I do have these issues, too and have supported your petition on Jira.
I'll add some screenshots and a comment later.

Sometimes it seems, the rendering of shadows has something to do with the objects, which are casting shadows...
for example the video of Danejasho, with this tower. As long as he looks to this tower, it casts a shadow.
If it disappears from (camera) sight, the shadows are not drawn.
So if the object is determined to make a DrawCall, it makes a shadow, else not.

And the second part of the video, the squares are all aligned to a point in the distant.
Maybe a graphical glitch from the original object placed and it was duplicated when it was pasted to that area - and the error has been duplicated, too.

Shadows seem worse than ever. I also don't think the Off-Screen Shadow setting works, or else the shadow cast by the mountain behind me would always render vs. only showing up if the angle at which I'm standing is right.

Some more screenies of the bad shadows in frostfang sea....

A discovery I found which seemed to help the off screen shadows a little bit. When I had off screen shadows turned off, my eq2_recent file had this line: r_gpu_shadows_keep false. When turning the off-screen shadows on, this line disappeared from the eq2_recent file. So I turned it back off, and changed the line to: r_gpu_shadows_keep true. It does seem to help some with the disappearing shadows, but not completely, so YMMV.

It's also interesting that it seems like shadows render based on the camera angle, which to me doesn't seem right. They should render based on the sun/light source and stay the same, regardless of how we change our camera angle while playing.

Well would've been nice to know shadows in GFaydark were disabled. Reexperiencing EQ2 after years away, finally playing my troub...low n behold, i spent hours fiddling with ui settings n UI placements and options, then keybindings, played a bit here n there, now im finally fixing graphics n FPS issues....and couldn't get some options to work.

Little did I know, from what I understand, cloth simulation/water interactions are gone completely, I learned fauna dont react to you walking through them anymore, and shadows are completely disabled in GFay.

BOY THAT LAST ONE WOULD'VE BEEN LOVELY TO KNOW.

Side note: if anyone thinks they could help pinpoint optimal settings or lemme know which settings are most efficient for me to scale back if I give specs, lemme know. I'm decent at this usually, but theres so many options and truthfully I don't know with my set up what's best to focus on maximizing/removing. One bonus I suppose is hopefully sometime soon I'll finally have a 6 core 3.2 from my friend....step up from my current 2.8 quad lol

Cloth simulation is definitely a thing, it's just the newer robe model (the one that doesn't come with a built in hood for the /hood option, such as the Immaculate Mage Robe from the marketplace) doesn't function well with it like the old robes. Also, your Particle Effect settings depend on whether or not cloth simulation renders at certain distances--try increasing particles to max size, with max render/detail distance and all that. Before I changed that setting, I noticed that on my Necromancer's Runed Robe of Recovery ( \aITEM 40379562 -308442885:Runed Robe of Recovery\/a ) the cloth dangly bits around the legs would switch from swaying/moving when I walked to just being stretched out around/over my legs depending on how much I was zoomed in/out in third person, or how close I was to other characters in similar robe models in first and third person.

I do miss water interactions. I remember when the water used to ripple and give a riptide effect when you swam/moved in it. Now the most you can get are water droplets and small ripple effects from the droplets falling back in when you move/jump in water. Vision distortion is still on tho'.

More crazy shadows

The Fermented Cabbage Bottle and the Isle of Mara Reality Anchor in Obol Plains are two Items that always do the colored block square for me. Strangely enough, If I Turn OFF GPU shadows in my houses, then turn it back on, the Fermented Cabbage Bottle will behave, but it doesn't work on the Isle of Mara Reality Anchor.

Also, my ini file did not have an "r_gpu_shadows_keep true" line, so I tried adding it, and no effect, still having the flashing shadow issue especially in Fens.

Hello everyone. I have the same problems with the shdows disappearing. I read through the post an tried some of the posible fixes you were mentioning here. I also had the following problem: I could see through the ground the outlines of other geometry in the game in Frostfang Sea in some areas. Activated and deactivated the gpu shadows and it seemd related to it.

I foun a fix for that that seems to work for me: I deactivated the multycore rendering and it fixed it. I cannot se through the ground anymore yeeey. The shadows were fixed somewat as well, i mean it is not so bad as it was before. It still disapears but not so often, just in realy certain locations and depending on where the sun light or moon light is found. I still have to do some testing but for now i can at least play with shadows on . I also noticed a dark shadow on the ground in front of my character at 5 meters or so and it moves as i move. This one is also related to the light given by the sun as it apears every time when the sun rises ingame.

My specs:
AMD FX 6100 - 3.6 GHZ
Gygabite Windforce 3x GTX 780
HyperX 8 GB DDR3
Gygabite 990XA-UD3 mobo
Windows 10

Thanks for sharing. I'll have to give that a try myself. For the last few months I've just left the shadows off and kinda forgot about them lol. I'll try and report back if disabling multi-core improves shadows for me as well.

Well aftersome testing only the ground glitch has been fully fixed by disableig multicore rendering. I now find myself with another annoyng but not so often found anomaly. When selecting a creature in Fallen Gate I get some wierd black textures and tearings but only when I selct the mobs and again only in certain areas. It will continue to trak down what other wierd stuff is happening and will play with settings a bit more. If i find something new i will post here again

Ok i return with news. I managed to fix the problems. It resolved the tearings, flikerings, black textures, wierd anomalies and reduced the shadow disappearance to a greate extent. Well it did for me:

After disableing multicore support I disabled AO (Ambient Occlusion) and depth of field. After that I went and made a configuration in Nvidia Control Panel specificaly for Everquest 2.

Note: You will not find Everquest 2 in the list of programs. You will need to add it and after that be shure to have it selected.
These are the changes i made:
Anistrophic Filtering - 8x
Anti Aliassing Mode - Override any application setting
Anti Aliassing - 8xCSAA
Cuda GPUS - All (Nvidia Only)
Texture Filtering Anistrophic Sample Optimisation - On
Tripple Buffering - On
Vertical Sync - On

And i set in eq2_recent.ini :
cl_screenrefresh 75

Plus as an added bonus i got crisper and a tad sharper look to the game and better graphics

Note: These settings may work for ati cards as well. I have no means to test it.
Note 2: The shadow disappearnce is not fully removed. There are still some places where you will find something like this happening, but against what i had before experienced this is a greate difference. I tested these settings in Commonlands, Freeport, Fallen Gate, New Hallas, Frostfang Sea as my best char's are only level 30 and these are the lands that i discoverred for now and had the most problems for me.

Please let me know if it worked for you as well.

Thanks for your time and sharing your results. I did get a chance to turn off Multi-core and did a little testing. I did not see the ground glitch, but the disappearance/flickering issues were still present. I'll try and test out your settings tomorrow and provide an update.

Well after some more playing and when finaly I was thinking it worked the shadow problem apeared in other locations in frostfag where i did not have them. Also the shadow appearing before me is still there but barely visible. The problems appear now when the lightning of the sun and the moon ar now in different angles than before. So it was fixed on one side and blown up on the other... Also It fixed for me the problems with glitches in Fallen Gate but i still have one particular one in Frostfang at the orcs near the camp before New Hallas. Some strange artifacts apear instead of their weapons. I switched off the shaodws and gues what... they were ok now. Darn... this game wont give up.

Here are some photos of what i was talking about in the earlyer posts:
Ground Glitch - was fixed by disableing multicore support.
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-20_00034.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
Fallen Gate anomalies - was fixed by applying the settings form the nvidia post i wrote,
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-21_00001.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0 - whater disappearing
and
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-20_00039.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1 - tearing and black texture on background

What was not fixed:
Weapon anomaly without dinamyc field of view:
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-21_00002.jpg.html?sort=3&o=3
Weapon anomaly with dinamyc fov:
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-21_00004.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1 - camera distance far
and
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-21_00006.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2 - camera distance close 1st Person view

And aded bonus the shadow that appears in front of me that I was talnkig about.
http://s633.photobucket.com/user/djakal/media/2016-02-20_00038.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0 - it starts from the elephants on the left. It is a big shadow you can't miss it.

Sorry i could post them only as links.

And if you disable gpu shadows than remove the everquest 2 nvidia setting from Nvidia CP as well. It causes flickering if shadows are disabled.

Well, some good came out of all this. Disabling Multi-core definitely helped with some of the issues, but as you've found GPU shadows can still be quite glitchy. I fear we'll never see anything done to help this matter, so we can either deal with the issues, or just turn off shadows completely.

Oddly enough, when I turned off shadows it didn't take long for me to forget about them entirely. This surprised me because I'm usually a stickler for such things, but it was so nice not having all the glitches!