Please fix the Lightbulb offset. It is causing problems! (not fixed yet)

Hello! This problem has annoyed me for quite some time. The problem appeared some time after this summer.
The problem is that the lights are acting a weird ugly way. It is kinda annoying. Like i got a lamp on the ceiling of a room. The floor gets completely dark but the rest is lit up. This is because the lightbulps move away from the lamp and into the floor. it did not do this earlier and i want this fixed. Speculars are not rendered correctly either. there is several places where the lightbulps are going thru walls/floors so it looks like the lamp is inside there instead of the actual lamp i have placed on the ceiling. I really want this fixed because it kinda annoying. It was not like this earlier. It was fine in the beginning of DX11 when the lightbulps actually was inside the actual lamps, but something changed after some updates after this summer. I want to know why or if you are going to fix this. At least give some settings to make the lights act like before so they don't go offset because it wrecks my fun with designing stuff. Some of my friends are also having trouble/problems with this.

Here is some examples i made for my problem. There is examples from before the light change happened where the lights was looking fine and new examples from the latest updates where it acts ugly. It's the same spaceship/stations between the old and new examples without me changing anything on the lights. I hope you understand what i'm trying to explain.

Here you see why having offset combined with the radius slider is a big issue!!




Old Nice Looking DX11


New Ugly DX11


Do you see the large difference here? Lets take a look at one more example from my refinery. Take a closer look at the specular difference in this one and the colors.

Old Nice Looking DX11


New Ugly DX11




Here i'm going to show a more specific example of the problem.




I hope those examples explained the problem enough. have tried to report this earlier but did not get a respond. I would also like to know why the lamps got changed to act this way. I really want them to work like they did earlier because it was realistic then and nice looking. Atleast give us an option to make them work like before. Some of my friends are also annoyed by this

And if the devs thinks One second this light offset thing helps anything about lightleaks they made it ever worse because the light bulps can even move from the lamp so far it goes completely trough the floor and ends up underneath it! Please remove that ugly/stupid light offset or give us an option to turn it off/on ourselves


Please get the lightbulps fixed Asap! Should not be that hard?

 

Bump

 

I've found this annoying when trying to build corvettes, especially when trying to light a 1x1 hallway.

 

Well one of those pics is in rooms 2 blocks in hight. Stil the floor is completely dark. It was not an issue earlier

 

This is a design choice. The DX9 version was always like this (don't know if it has changed during the DX11 lifetime because I use DX11). Essentially they're selecting between two evils. Either moving the actual light source, or tons of light leakage as the light effects things past armor.

Personally I can't make up my mind which one is the worst. The way it is now makes it a lot easier to avoid light leakage past armor blocks, but you also get the issues you're describing here. Both have their problems.

 

- Again, it's still in alpha. Things like these are expected to happen. And when doing bug reports, don't expect replies. They see the bug reports and are totally aware of these issues and they will be dealt with in time, be patient.
If they were gonna reply to every bug report they wouldn't have time to develop the game.

 

Fine. Im just trying to help sort this out. Some of my friends are as annyed as me by this

 

Interior lights shift the light source away as radius increases because it's cheap way of emulating a cone, and it's usually good enough. Unfortunately, when you have a low ceiling (as my ships tend to ) it's not good enough. Note that you can sometimes cheat by putting a second light above your ceiling, with max radius, to provide the actual lighting, and the visible light fixture is just there to be pretty. To see what I'm talking about, look at the hangar lights on my drone carrier.

To me the best solution would be to add an offset slider to lights, that allows the player to override the position.

 

In my eyes it looks stupid, ugly and unrealistic. Even in large rooms

 

It's the price you pay for performance. If the light wasn't offset from the fixture, then high-radius lights would illuminate the ceiling of the room above them, unless you made interior lights cast shadows, in which case, RIP framerate.

 

That was better tha completely black floors in rooms having 1-2 blocks hight. It looks stupid most places because it looks like the light comes from the floor instead of the ceiling. And the lights is stil going through walls, floors etc. So this stupid change made it worse. Just look at my pics

 

Before they made the change, light worked as supposed and increasing the radius did not move the light source, yet I always increased the radius so I can prevent dark spots to appear in my ships.
Now I get dark spots in rooms that have a light right above them -_-.

You can't safely increase the radius of all lights without causing problems somewhere. I always have to use the light on my astronaut to properly see inside ships.

@GotLag the radius increased in the previous versions aswell and it's the players fault if they place too many lights and increase the radius too high, but I atleast want the ability to increase the radius properly. I dont see why I should run around using the light on the helmet all the time because either the radius isnt big enough to light up the entire room or the radius is too high to light up the floor....

@LordDevious I find moving the light source more troubeling. Look at my screenshots, just how am I supposed to see in a room with a pitch black floor? Lights not supposed to leave dark areas that still require you to use your helmet light simply because you can't fully see otherwise. Lights should be fully functional in their porpuse of seeing in the dark and this glitch prevents it from doing so.

At default 3.6m radius
https://images.akamai.steamuserconte...082/CAF4C648A433ED0660481147BCD3026B12E25680/

At maximum radius
https://images.akamai.steamuserconte...468/4164BDE5F435A141B228D867F0D557C77ADEB890/

One block below....
https://images.akamai.steamuserconte...665/F07AAEAFBC20AADA124286EE6DBBD2F5C8012A2C/

Say what you want about it, but you can't deny that this is causing problems when trying to light up a room properly.

 

That last pic you got shows me the leaking is actually even worse. The light is even appearing from the outside!

 

Light positions have always been offset in DX9.

I just wish the offset was controllable.

 

For the effect in your second picture: Workaround is to lower the "Radius" setting of the light.
When you lower it, at some point the floor will return to "normally lit".
Lowering the "Intensity" can also improve it further in some cases.
This works for me most of the time for me when this happens in DX11.

I guess this weird lighting is coming from reflection calculations of some sort.
With DX11, the light is generally too directed. It should be much softer and more indirect to be natural.

 

Being able to control the offset would sure be helpful.
Ofc I would prefer it the offset wasnt even there, but the more I think about it, the more
I get the feeling that, if the offset could be set from zero to idk 1 or 2m, people would be able to place a light at the ceiling, but move the lightsource to the middle of the room to light up the entire room instead of having a bright ceiling and a not so bright floor.

 

Offset appears to be approximately half the radius, so anything up to 5 metres.

 

True, since a single large block is 2,5m long and as seen in my screenshots, at 10m radius the light is just about below the second block.
Now I realize why the offset is even there, yet, it would be better if the light even at max radius would always try to be just in the middlepoint between ceiling and floor instead of moving through the floor, because that doesnt look too good, and sometimes you want to have a big radius in order to make sure everything is lit up without having to place lights on every single block.

 

I couldn't give one, two or three @%*$# about the light passing through anything. I do, however, care about being blinded or left in total darkness by lights with an incorrectly positioned light source.

 

Same i dont care much about leaking (even tho it's actually worse for me now with the offsett lights. I care about where the light originates from. Right now it is just wierdly and stupid looking. You clearly see on the specular reflections the light is not emited from the actual lamp. i want the old way back where the light did originate from the actual lamp. it looked so much better in both large and small rooms. Also more realistic than it does now. For me it was easier to light up places when the old realistic method where used. Wish keen could give us an option to switch between the two ways. The new way for those who like to see tiny corridoors blackened and unrealistically placed lights. and option for those who wants the older nice way that was realistic.

 

Bump! Can the devs please take a look at this and make them stop getting offset while expanding the range! Just make them stay at the lamp like before, please! It's just getting more annoying! Have this room where it looks like the light is coming from the floor and the lamps are at the ceiling! give us own button to make them offset instead of making them do it while expanding range! its getting really annoying! especially with these black spots appearing! did not have this problem earlier and the leaking is actually even worse! it leaks in a even worse way! that the light appears from the outside and not the lamp is the worst leaking ever! https://images.akamai.steamuserconte...665/F07AAEAFBC20AADA124286EE6DBBD2F5C8012A2C/

 

Bump

 

So that's what's causing that, good to know, wish we could control the displacement of the light, but at least I can fix it.

 

I agree, this is a major issue. If your room is 1 block tall don't go over 3.8 range, I can gain a little extra light width by increasing the falloff all the way to 3 but any range over 3.8 you get no floor light and it ends up showing on the deck bellow.

 

Why doesn't any Dev respond? tried to forward this on the bug section at steam, no respond in weeks/months. Now i try here on the official forum and still no respond after 1-2 weeks...

 

Because they most likely know about this, the same as they know light sources shines through blocks, and they've basically made a sticky thread of things that doesn't need to be reported.

Ref:
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/a...-not-need-to-report-aka-known-issues.7288650/

The issue you got here has always been present in dx9, for example, as someone else has mentioned already.

 

They don't respond because this is by design and not a bug. They also can't possibly respond to every bug report. That's simply impossible. They're human, not computers. This is also a very minor problem and thus obviously of low priority.

It's also impossible to actually prevent light leakage because that would become a way too heavy computational process for this game. So they chose to make it easier to avoid by using the offset method. Unfortunately, as you have noticed, this has its own weakness, forcing one to need more lights to light the same area without leakage.

Essentially, this is a choice between two evils. Which is the worst is very subjective, so I'd imagine they went with the method they themselves found best.

There's no point in bumping. All you will achieve is to aggravate the people who has to read the bug report forums. That's not a good idea.

 

I know that the leaking cant be fixed. I'm saying it is horrible to look at when the floor turns black etc. And this is because they made the light go offset instead of keeping their location like real lights. It looks bad wherever i use the lights. And this is also in rooms with height of 4-5. It looks like the light comes from the opposite side of it. I know the lights always was this way in dx9 and i always wondered why. When DX11 came they acted like real lights. it was one of the reasons i stopped using dx9 because the lights looked so much better and didn't turn the floor black in low rooms but later they suddenly made the lights act the same way in dx11 for a bad reason. And they have responded to even minor bugs earlier so why not this? how many more people need to join the thread to complain until they revert the change? they obviously didn't think about the issues with they way the lights works now when they changed it. If you have nothing more to say than that why are you here? Because it seems you are happy with weird looking lightening and black floors in 1-3 rooms and lights even appearing on the outside like this picture https://images.akamai.steamuserconte...665/F07AAEAFBC20AADA124286EE6DBBD2F5C8012A2C/

 

The workaround for the dark areas is simple: Lower the radius so the point don't move beyond the next block, and use more lights. Lights in DX11 shouldn't be as performance intensive as the DX9 lights. This is the trick I and countless others have used since we started playing, back when DX9 and offset lights were all there was.

I'm here because you asked questions, and I have some answers. Do you want me to tell you just what you want to hear? How will that help you? I'm simply stating facts.

I have not said a word about my preference. I haven't really decided which of the two evils is the worst for me, the guaranteed light leakage of the non-offset version, or the problem you describe. I don't like that the point light moves, but I do like that I can avoid light leakage. I am leaning slightly towards non-offset though.

I do know that there were plenty of people complaining about the unavoidable light leakage. If they go back to the non-offset version, then there will be someone as angry as you complaining about that instead, wailing about the devs not answering them, not reverting so it follows their preference.

The bugs they respond to are more or less random, new, or where they need more information. They don't respond to this one because (a) it's known and (b) it was a concious decision by them, and (c) it's minor. All cosmetic bugs are minor. Hell, pretty much all graphics in this game is placeholder.

 

Well it seems you like the new DX9 evil and you state it is because "it is easier to avoid leaking". The freekin leaking is Worse for me and many others in the new version. instead of leaking "a little" upwards it tend to leak downwards now in an even worse way like the picture i linked. leaking cant be fixed until they add shadows (which probably never happen) so the new dx9 version doesn't avoid nothing. i wouldn't call the older version an evil because the lights emitted from the lamp like an (real lamp). it's the leaking itself AND the new offset thing that should be called an evil. but i don't care much about leaking. It's ok because i know it cant be fixed but the dx9 lightening did not make the leaking less of a problem. Maybe in rooms with 4+ in height and more. But NOT in small rooms where it is 1-3 and most users like most of my friends etc. make their interiors on the size 1-4 which this new lightening mechanism just gives trouble and makes it all messed up looking without having the render distance so tiny you need to have 2x amount of lights needed. Yes i want the devs to respond. because i would really like an option to make them work like before in settings or an offset switch to change the offset yourself without it changing with the freekin radious. I DON'T want more lights because expanding the radius moves them trough the freekin floor. i want to be able to use as few i used before to light stuff up without stuff getting ugly. And more lights just means less performance, especially for low end computer users playing the game. And it stil looks wrong even when shrinking radius.