Water surface visibility flipping on/off at certain angles, including from up close?

MisakaMikoto on 13/2/2020 at 06:00

I've noticed that depending on where I stand in relation to a water surface, it is sometimes visible and sometimes not, directly corresponding (in a way unclear to me) to where I'm standing in relation to it. For me at least, this has been the case when I've created (quite) large bodies of water.

I recorded a gameplay video of my FM in progress showing it in action, with linked timestamps in the video description that jump directly to the parts of the video where it happens: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTiZjM0Ln8g)

The FM has been optimized, pathfound, etc., with no errors.

The first occurrence is the most egregious: the water surface visibility flips on and off when standing immediately next to the water, depending on my movement laterally back and forth across the dividing line between two DromEd rooms; whereas the other instances occur from a distance.

What, generally speaking, causes this—if anyone knows? And how is this effect avoided?

R Soul on 13/2/2020 at 18:46

I think this problem only affects lightmapped water. I've also recently been working with a large body of water and had the same problem. So far the only thing I could do was to make the body of water less large.

john9818a on 15/2/2020 at 02:31

I'm not sure if it would make any difference if you used flood vs water brushes. In my last mission Derelict Dock District I had a fairly large body of water that I broke down into smaller sections. Each air brush used as large world environments had its own water brush but all of them together made one large body of water. Also it might make a difference to increase the scale of the underwater texture, though I haven't tried it yet.