Bleeding shadows at night

[junspud 1,066]

A lot of my shadows are distorted during daylight. I almost never play as night time, and I never noticed I seem to have a serious issue;

This is how it looks with a 'clean start', as in not scrolling the map and refreshing everything by zooming in and out;

 

Once I start scrolling, this happens;

 

Stuff starts to bleed out and these black splotches start 'peeling off' or leaking from everything.

 

Here you can see some of the distorted and messed up shadows during the day;

 

Anyone know if this can be remedied?

[rivit 3,391]

The odd thing here is that most shadows look fine - however others look like ghosts that are in the wrong place - so pointing to graphics setup

There are a few things that could be checked.

1) In Game Under Graphics settings turn the shadows off:  ie setting Low - what happens then? , normally use Medium, High puts a real strain on depth calculations will slow the game (but looks good)

2) The GPU may not be in 32bit mode - in 16bit the image is dithered (you will see a checkerboard of pixels up close). This may be a function of the monitor capabilities.

3) the GPU may not handle overlay processing particularly well (some older ATI cards had this problem) but now all cards are/should up to it. Shadows are rendered onto the image near the end of display preparation and sort of float in their own plane.

4) there may be a shortage of video mem and its getting reused before its cleaned up.

for 2,3 and 4 you should check the log in C:\programs (x82)\Maxis\SimCity Deluxe\Apps\userid-config-log.txt to see what SC4 has made of your setup. At the about line 46 of this file it shows which Rules it has applied - and what the best options for you are.   We probably need to see that to get more clues.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

14 hours ago, junspud said:

Anyone know if this can be remedied?

Yes, just turn off shadows.

[junspud 1,066]

7 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

Yes, just turn off shadows.

At night, it actually still does it with the shadows turned off. I never really play the game in night mode though so it isn't a huge deal for me.

[junspud 1,066]

21 hours ago, rivit said:

The odd thing here is that most shadows look fine - however others look like ghosts that are in the wrong place - so pointing to graphics setup

There are a few things that could be checked.

1) In Game Under Graphics settings turn the shadows off:  ie setting Low - what happens then? , normally use Medium, High puts a real strain on depth calculations will slow the game (but looks good)

2) The GPU may not be in 32bit mode - in 16bit the image is dithered (you will see a checkerboard of pixels up close). This may be a function of the monitor capabilities.

3) the GPU may not handle overlay processing particularly well (some older ATI cards had this problem) but now all cards are/should up to it. Shadows are rendered onto the image near the end of display preparation and sort of float in their own plane.

4) there may be a shortage of video mem and its getting reused before its cleaned up.

for 2,3 and 4 you should check the log in C:\programs (x82)\Maxis\SimCity Deluxe\Apps\userid-config-log.txt to see what SC4 has made of your setup. At the about line 46 of this file it shows which Rules it has applied - and what the best options for you are.   We probably need to see that to get more clues.

I see, thank you for all that, very informative stuff.

It's an Intel HD 3000 btw.

It should be in 32bit, at least all of the options are checked as 32bit.

I'm kind of leaning towards #4.

Quote

Numbers
-------
cpuSpeed = 2394
memory = 1024
freeMemory = 1024
screenWidth = 1600
screenHeight = 900
screenBPP = 16
videoMemory = 64
textureMemory = 64
textureStages = 4
bogoFPS = 0
bogoMPPS = 0

Rules
-----
applying Sound
applying high sound detail
applying City Detail and Day/Night Settings
applying City Detail and Day/Night Settings>
applying medium computer power
  option 9 = 2
  option 13 = 0
  option 15 = 2
applying Texture Quality and Building Variety Settings
applying Texture Quality and Building Variety Settings>
applying high memory
  option 3 = 3
  option 14 = 3
applying Variable Speed Automata
applying default
  option 10 = 1
applying Standard hardware
  option 0 = 3
  option 1 = 3
  option 2 = 3
  option 4 = 1
  option 5 = 1
  option 8 = 1
  option 7 = 1
  option 6 = 1
  option 11 = 2
  option 12 = 1

This is what's in the log file for options/specs at the moment. I've tried forcing it to run in different configurations/rules manually to see if having it on 'fast card' settings changes anything but it still does it.

I suppose the best one can do is avoid scrolling and clean the graphics up by zooming in and out once it gets dirty. Though the shadows during daylight still remain in a constant state of distortion, which is a shame because SC4 really does look fantastic with the settings turned up, imo much nicer compared to the styling of SC2013.

I wish they'd do some sort of upgrade/remaster or something for SC4, it would really benefit from a bit of a rewrite, though that's never gonna happen.

Just discovered this thread.  OP seems to be having the same daylight shadow issue as me, unfortunately hasn't found any sort of fix.

I've tried manually editing the graphicsrules to force the game to utilize more graphics memory, as it's shared and I'm not sure SC4 is capable of actually utilizing more memory than the lowest/default amount, causing the #4 issue. I'm not sure which setting I'm supposed to change to achieve that though.

The thing I really wish I could fix is the daylight shadows being rendered in the correct locations as I rarely play in night mode, it's like some of the shadows are permanently distorted even with a fresh redraw. If I change the shadows from medium/high to low, the shadows briefly end up being in the right locations before a redraw.

[rivit 3,391]

I'm inclined to agree. SC4 should be no problem to HD3000 - its much more likely to be video memory management affecting the result. It doesn't seem to have a lot to play with, so if memory isn't big on the machine it wouldnt be able to swap a lot at a time between RAM and VideoMem either. You may just have to put up with it. 

Sometimes there are Props (trees signs etc) that have weird LODs that can also result in offset or strange shadows. This can be tested by making a lot in LE that uses items you think are suspect and then seeing what it looks like when plopped. If that's the cause at least you can find alternatives. - I guess it depends on how much it annoys you.

[rsc204 21,804]

6 hours ago, junspud said:

I've tried manually editing the graphicsrules to force the game to utilize more graphics memory, as it's shared and I'm not sure SC4 is capable of actually utilizing more memory than the lowest/default amount, causing the #4 issue. I'm not sure which setting I'm supposed to change to achieve that though.

SC4 can only use what the system allocates to the GPU. Internal graphics use a shared memory setup which gets rather complex. At a basic level, 64MB of system RAM is always allocated/reserved for use by the Intel GPU. However, the system can allocate up to 1GB of system memory as V-RAM, provided it's both necessary and available. This happens dynamically, which of course the game can't detect on startup, however I believe despite this, SC4 can still utilise up to the full 1GB whilst playing.

As such, I don't think your issues are anything to do with memory, but just a general driver-related problem. Intel drivers are hit and miss with SC4, visual glitches being a common side-effect of missing legacy functions for DirectX. Of course if you are using Software Rendering instead of DirectX, that too may explain your problems, since it's a compatibility mode some things may not display optimally.

[junspud 1,066]

15 hours ago, rsc204 said:

SC4 can only use what the system allocates to the GPU. Internal graphics use a shared memory setup which gets rather complex. At a basic level, 64MB of system RAM is always allocated/reserved for use by the Intel GPU. However, the system can allocate up to 1GB of system memory as V-RAM, provided it's both necessary and available. This happens dynamically, which of course the game can't detect on startup, however I believe despite this, SC4 can still utilise up to the full 1GB whilst playing.

As such, I don't think your issues are anything to do with memory, but just a general driver-related problem. Intel drivers are hit and miss with SC4, visual glitches being a common side-effect of missing legacy functions for DirectX. Of course if you are using Software Rendering instead of DirectX, that too may explain your problems, since it's a compatibility mode some things may not display optimally.

I do use hardware/Direct X. Driver issues makes sense, I don't think any of the available Intel HD3000 drivers work well with SC4. Even though they're both old I suppose SC4 still has almost a decade on the HD3000.

[Prophet42 1,500]

You could try using OpenGL instead of Direct X to see if that resolves your issues.  On my older laptop using Windows 7 with an Intel integrated graphics card, I ended up having to use OpenGL instead of DirectX.  For some reason, the DirectX setting kept screwing up the graphics.  Now granted, I was able to eventually find a driver (like 2-3 yrs later) for the integrated graphics that allowed me to use DirectX.  Up until that point OpenGL worked just fine.

Edit:  Just in case you are wondering, I was able to use HD graphic SC4 lots/props with OpenGL.

[junspud 1,066]

3 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

You could try using OpenGL instead of Direct X to see if that resolves your issues.  On my older laptop using Windows 7 with an Intel integrated graphics card, I ended up having to use OpenGL instead of DirectX.  For some reason, the DirectX setting kept screwing up the graphics.  Now granted, I was able to eventually find a driver (like 2-3 yrs later) for the integrated graphics that allowed me to use DirectX.  Up until that point OpenGL worked just fine.

Edit:  Just in case you are wondering, I was able to use HD graphic SC4 lots/props with OpenGL.

Unfortunately Open GL just ctds the game when I have HD content, like software mode.

[Prophet42 1,500]

If that is the case then I would agree with rsc204 that it is a driver issue and it is a matter of finding the right driver (which may be near impossible).  Have you tried setting shadow detail to a lower setting to see if that resolves the issue? 

Another thought, are you using a dark night mod?  I'm not sure if such a mod would affect the shadows themselves during day (messing around with the color scheme and all), but maybe try a sandbox region without the night mod and see if the shadows are still messed up.  I know it's a long shot, but at this point you may just have to do trial and error troubleshooting.

[junspud 1,066]

No night mod, just vanilla Maxis night. I tried out a night mod to see if it'd fix anything but nah.

Actually, if I have shadows turned on (med or high) and then switch them to low, the shadows revert to the correct positions until I zoom in/out a few ticks, then they dissapear.

Here's an example of the shadows problem and another glitch that happens with the cursor a lot;

 

 

 

You can see a lot of the shadows are distorted and positioned incorrectly.

 

This is the shadows the game generates when switching the shadows from medium or high to low, once you do a refresh on the screen they disappear.

I've tried lots of things to try and fix it, a bunch of driver revisions, options in the game and in the control panel for the hd3000. I've also tried messing with the shadow parameters and visual effect parameters in the graphicsrules config, haven't found any which seems to fix the issue.

I think it may be impossible to fix on this hardware.

Turning off shadows eliminates the shadow issue, but during night mode the graphics still mess up like in the picture in the op.