[1.200] Flickering Shadows

In my case, I am using the recommended AMD GPU which makes me hopeful that Keen keeps one of those around for QA testing:

• GPU: RX Vega56 on latest drivers (currently 22.2.1)
  
• CPU: i5-9400F (6 core/6 thread)
  
• 16 GiB RAM
• Motherboard: ASRock B365 Pro4
• Windows 10.0.19044

If the RX Vega56 is unavailable for testing, these chips are based on the same architecture and should behave the same: RX Vega64, Vega Frontier Edition, Radeon VII. The latter two come equipped with 16 GiB VRAM instead of 8 though if that makes a difference.

Repro steps as mentioned above.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti here, updated to the latest drivers and geared towards performence over quality. Still getting the shadow boxes.

That pretty much rules out hardware and driver issues then. Can you confirm that the effect is strongest with "Medium" shadow quality, barely noticeable on "Low" and gone on "High"?

To me it only appears on the low settings.

Ok, then it is more complex than the thought. Today I tried to get some more background on this and checked if the problem was there in a clean install of 1.199. I did the following:

1. Going back to a clean version of 1.199:
   - In %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers delete mipMapTextureCache2.B5 and rename SpaceEngineers.cfg to SpaceEngineers.cfg.bak
   - In the game Content\Data folder delete all but PlanetDataFiles (ore distribution textures) and Prefabs, thereby removing manual modifications to post-processing, translation and LOD-ing. (Yikes!)
   - Removed the 3rd party "PluginLoader"In Steam set the Beta to 1.199, let it download and verified game files
   - Started the game with no customization except enabling Experimental Mode
   - Did the repro steps again (albeit waiting for the sun to come around; forgot to mention that!)
   Result: Game pre-selected medium shadow details that used to flicker in 1.200 and shadows look good.
   
2. Updating to 1.200
   - Update game to 1.200
   - In Steam, verified game filesIn %APPDATA%\SpaceEngineers deleted mipMapTextureCache2.B5 and SpaceEngineers.cfg
   Result: Shadows still looking good on medium details! Here I knew some setting or file was corrupted.
   
   
3. Re-enable the PluginLoader - still looking good
4. Copy back over my game file modifications - still good
5. Restore SpaceEngineers.cfg from backup - Shadows flicker again!

Having it reduced down to the SpaceEngineers.cfg, I compared started adding lines from the "bad" backup version to the good one using a merge tool until shadows started flickering again.

Summary

It turned out to be a combination of Shadow Quality and FOV slider. The default FOV is 70° and the bug only shows with lower settings. Without us posting our SE config the support team really couldn't reproduce it! The bug is most visible with low shadow quality and FOV around 54° or medium shadow quality and FOV at 40°. Then just remember to have sun rotation enabled and you should be able to reproduce it during the day time.

Best regards,

Marco

Interestingly i use a fov slightly higher than 70 and it still shows, albeit only on low settings. But ill see if your theory is right.

Edit: it seems to be; i managed to get the shadow boxes appear on medium settings with a fov of 40.