[James Ross]

Fixed in X2176! The streetlight should be working now, and hopefully the other weirdnesses with missing or misplaced parts of models.

[dennisat]

So far I've checked 4 instances where the problem used to be and they now show properly. If I find any other manifestations I'll let you know. Thanks for resolving this.

Dennis

[roeter]

The 'sausages' are back on their posts.

Thanks,
Rob Roeterdink

[vince]

Hi James,

The data on these two screens show a the difference. Visually I note the station signs, the red parked car on the street and the static train in the yard at the left seem to be lighted differently. They do not 'flicker' when player is in motion. Overall in this heavily detailed route under construction I have found when instancing is ON I get much smoother operation.


Back to pounding spikes at Lynbrook
Regards,
Vince

[roeter]

This problem is probably caused by different instances of that same object having different directions, and therefor have their light / shade side reversed.
Here are two more examples where this instancing causes problems due to light and shade (note : this is not due to shadows, but to lighted / shaded sides of object due to position of the sun - it happens even if dynamic shadows are switched off).

First two pictures below show a patch of grass which 'flickers' between light and dark (see yellow circle). Likely it is shown as 'light' when the first instance happens to be in the sunlight, and 'dark' when it happens to be shaded.



The next picture shows a set of 'berms'. The first one has light/dark on the correct side, but the next series, which are of the same type and therefor instance copies, should have light/dark on the opposite sites due to the different direction. Further on, there are some different types which again have the light/dartk side shown correct.


I can understand why these effects would be difficult to avoid - the additional processing would likely undo most of the reduction of processing time. But it shows the instancing is not flawless.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

[vince]

roeter, on 11 September 2014 - 12:45 PM, said:

This problem is probably caused by different instances of that same object having different directions, and therefor have their light / shade side reversed .....................snip...........................
I can understand why these effects would be difficult to avoid - the additional processing would likely undo most of the reduction of processing time. But it shows the instancing is not flawless.
Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

Hi Rob, Thanks for the explanation. I don't regard it as a 'problem' as in my example they are not that noticeable. I did a 'blink' compare between the two pics and then it is noticeable. But driving? In your example those berms covered with vegetation I'd think may hide the effect, especially driving a train. I'm lousy at counting rivets so these little glitches don't bother me. The objects don't flicker when [layer is in motion. btw, my vid is NVidia GTX650. CPU is Intel i5 3Ghz quadcore w/8G ram.

Regards,
vince

[Genma Saotome]

IIMO a large portion of the value of instancing W/O lighting problems could be achieved by having one setting for roads & track -- virtually flat and so no shadow issues will occur and a second setting for all other static objects. I'd turn on the first and probably ignore the second.

[gpz]

Genma Saotome, on 11 September 2014 - 08:13 PM, said:

IIMO a large portion of the value of instancing W/O lighting problems could be achieved by having one setting for roads & track -- virtually flat and so no shadow issues will occur and a second setting for all other static objects. I'd turn on the first and probably ignore the second.

But you forgot to add, that you would ignore the second only because in your route you grouped the objects to larger ones, thus you wouldn't benefit from instancing on them anyway. I'm sorry for this comment, but I felt this piece of info was missing here. :)

[Genma Saotome]

Yeah, almost all of my objects are unique too, grouped or not, but that's not the point. The issue is w/ funny shadows. Middle of the day lighting doesn't matter so much and at night not at all so if you run then instancing for everything makes good sense. But early morning, late afternoon -- when shadows are long, you might not want instancing on taller objects so turn it off. But track and roads are always there and IMO should always be instanced. That's why I think two controls would be better.

[disc]

Genma Saotome, on 12 September 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

Yeah, almost all of my objects are unique too, grouped or not, but that's not the point. The issue is w/ funny shadows. Middle of the day lighting doesn't matter so much and at night not at all so if you run then instancing for everything makes good sense. But early morning, late afternoon -- when shadows are long, you might not want instancing on taller objects so turn it off. But track and roads are always there and IMO should always be instanced. That's why I think two controls would be better.

"when shadows are long, you might not want instancing on taller objects so turn it off."

As i see instancing affects only the shading, but not the shadowing, so what's the point of turning shadowing off?