Shadow Striping?

[Sera_Taru]

Does anyone know what causes the shadow striping that you see on the car body and how to get rid of it?

http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/Ezuna999/media/244210_2016-01-07_00001_zpsygdqlf0y.png.html

I have it narrowed down to a LOD bias issue....but beyond that don't know how to solve it.

[Mr Crisp]

Its been like that in AC for a long time. I have no idea what the developers will or can do about it exactly.

I think I read somewhere that ambient occlusion can amplify the striping, so it might be wise to go into your GPU control settings and turn off AO or reduce it.

Let us know if you fix it.

[quf]

Shadow quality in video settings can also improve it. But if you need to save fps, only use higher shadow quality when loading replays.

[Sera_Taru]

Ok guys thanks for these replies...I'm also posting this issue on the AC forums and have them scratching their heads as well. I'll post a couple more images in a few minutes that may help us see what's going on.

Incidentally I'm also getting the issue no matter what shadow settings I use. AO is a good thought...let me try another test with it off to see what happens.

[Sera_Taru]

Ok here are 4 images, 4 frames apart that show the car going away from us in the replay. Notice the back bumper....it has the striping and then it disappears as the LOD on the car reduces it's details.

Does this help narrow down what it could be?

http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/Ezuna999/media/1_zpsc9ml94gd.png.html

http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/Ezuna999/media/2_zpsdxqnt1ca.png.html

http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/Ezuna999/media/3_zpslrganbc7.png.html

http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/Ezuna999/media/4_zpsxysbxzvm.png.html

PS Ambient Occlusion is DISABLED in the driver in these pics :(

[Mr Crisp]

Hmm. AC isn't the only game that suffers from it and looking around it could be to do with the shadow map size.

Go into mydocuments/assetto corsa/cfg and open up video.ini and in the first block of settings you see SHADOW_MAP_SIZE=1024 (well mine is set at 1024). Try increasing this value to 2048 or 4096 and see if it makes any difference. It may well make a large performance hit depending on your PC.

Report back.

[Sera_Taru]

Darn it no luck I'm afraid :(

Reminds me of the Skyrim shadow striping bug.

Also I think I saw this in GT5 on PS4 and if I remember there was sound criticism of the dreadful shadows.

[Mr Crisp]

It affects dynamic shadowing I believe and is a common issue. Even working in the Unreal 4 engine, when using dynamic shadows, striping appears.

Reading around some suggest its a driver issue, shadow map size, shadow quality issue, AO issue but I can't seem to find a definitive solution to this.

[Sera_Taru]

Yea it doesn't surprise me it's something to do with the driver.

Fking Nvidia....bought a new gaming rig 5 months ago and based it around Nvidia.

Never and I mean NEVER again...I have had so many issues with their s****y drivers.

[Mr Crisp]

I would guess that Nvidia to optimise their drivers for games use a far too aggressive method of increasing the shadow performance of games, which results in some ugly shadows sometimes.

AMD are no different when optimising their drivers by being too aggressive on dialing back the tessellation in games, sometimes to the point where it causes artifacts or seriously reduces the quality of objects, all in the name of better performance.

You could try earlier Nvidia drivers, as unless you are really experiencing issues in modern AAA games or really require the VR optimised drivers, it might be an option to look at.

[Sera_Taru]

I'm actually using a Tweakforce.com modified driver...it has 'Clamp' enabled whereas the new drivers don't. (I suspect this is Nvidia making the AA look bad deliberately to force people to use DSR...then decide they need 2 cards instead of one.... = more $$$$)

[Sera_Taru]

Having said that....it must be an engine issue as well...I don't get this with pCars or Raceroom or a myriad of other titles and I have most on very high / ultra etc....

pCars has far more going on...I can run it full field in the rain, at dusk with all the eye candy on and I get 60 fps and it makes AC look like rubbish. No shadow issues there :(

[rudski]

Originally posted by Ezuna Aranna:

Never and I mean NEVER again...I have had so many issues with their s****y drivers.

I've been running AMD cards since the 6XXX series and had every generation till the latest.
AMD drivers aren't "terrible" but AMD constantly stuff things up within the driver and you never know what will happen with each update.

For example, it's an easy fix but UPLS. Why the ♥♥♥♥ after five years are we still having to disable this setting in every single driver update for the last five years. If you run crossfire and don't disable UPLS you can't monitor the temps nor control things like the fan speed on the second card. The driver itself shows two video cards but the second vidoe card never shows anything like temps in their GUI.
Basically AMD drivers by default do not support crossfire, how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid is that?

I have to do this with every single driver update, it's bloody annoying, they know it's annoying and they haven't bothered to fix it.

The latest driver update (crimson) doesn't even have a place to increase / decrease fan speed. I live on the doorsteps of hell and the temperature here is HOT, I want to run fan @ 100% but I can't.

Also fan noise.. Nvidia at 100% isn't that bad. AMD with two cards @ 100% fan speed is bloody loud.

The last generation card that I purchased the R9 280X I had to return three times. They finally upgraded me for free to the R9 290X (two of em) and guess what? After six months one of the fans is now broken and makes a ticking sound over and over and over and over.

You only have two options wiith video cards and Nvidia are the lesser of the two evils imo.

I used to run AMD cpu's because "bang for buck" they aren't that bad but once you do try a nice Intel i7 you don't go back, the differences are massive and my next system won't have anything from AMD. You get what you pay for and AMD are cheaper for a reason.

[Lotus 80]

Couldn't agree with you more regarding AMD. The ULPS thing especially is unreaI. I have a pair of M290Xs in my laptop, and while their performance can be breathtaking for mobile cards, more often than not a driver update will screw up one game or another's performance and lead me on a troubleshooting saga.

Even after my cards being on the market for two years, AMD can't even be bothered to give the M290X its own ID in the driver - it still always shows as HD8970M. Now, if the two cards are not identical as AMD claim they aren't, are any advances in the M290X being exploited if the driver sees it as HD8970M?

I've been lucky so far with Assetto Corsa, however and never had any issues that I can't fix. The BF4.exe Crossfire profile always seems to work and give me good scaling.I do have one persistent and weird graphics issue - if I drive with no apps on screen, I get microstutter. If I turn on the lap time info app (which I normally have on anyway), it disappears.