Why do lighting effects bleed?

Gruumsh1 · May 2023

Why does this occur in housing? e.g. You put a light in the basement and it bleeds through to the level above and vice versa.

I put Spell Scar shards in a wall and the fire element bled through into walls and around a corner.

It's quite frustrating.

SilverBride · May 2023

I don't know how they would stop this without removing the ability to sink lights into walls and other furnishings to light them up.

Gruumsh1 · May 2023

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't know how they would stop this without removing the ability to sink lights into walls and other furnishings to light them up.

Wouldn't that be in the code for the light effect rather than the surface of objects in its path though? Seems odd they'd write it so everything was permeable to light.

Sorry SilverBride, not trying to nit pick your answer here - much appreciated by the way.

Northwold · May 2023

Can't say precisely why but very likely performance limitations / deliberate caps of the engine. Even in the game itself glow effects can be seen through walls (eg the glow of a hostile's staff) and can be seen from vastly further away than other lights, so glows probably use a simplified lighting model (they may not even function as a light at all -- I've never scrutinised whether the glow effect affects the lighting of nearby surfaces; are we seeing the glow effect overlaid on an object, or are we seeing the object itself being lit ?).

On lighting itself (as distinct from glows), if you have to calculate shadows from too many light sources through too many surfaces, it rapidly eats up performance. Yes, the game is not raytraced so your machine doesn't catch fire, but it would still have an impact.

Fischblut · May 2023

It wasn't always like this, and I'm very sad to see that it wasn't fixed

Almost 3 years ago, during Stonethorn DLC PTS, something was silently done to lights in the whole game (and this includes housing). It ruined not only the look of environment, but also Worm Wizard personality and Shadow Rider Senche mount.

I thought that even original red light could be more subtle, but I love the fluffy sabre cat model anyway so I learned to love the light in it too:

vs
Ruined look, so nobody can admire the cute muzzle of this mount:

Originally, light source seems hidden inside something. In this case, the head of the mount:

vs
Nowadays, light source is proudly ignoring obstacles. Be it ground, wall or someone's body:

I didn't make photos of that personality from behind before the bug, but you can imagine that it wasn't shining through my character's back.

Bonfire's light source behind the wooden wall:

In original state, you can't see the awful glow of that bonfire even behind NPC's body, let alone behind the wooden wall:

Sorry, I don't have better picture cause I've never had any reason to take photo of the bonfire behind the wall... when it was working as intended

NPC's flaming staff inside the rock, very immersive:

Psijic portal behind the rock (ok, that is the only positive side of this bug, easy to see those portals

):

Wayshrine light source makes sure player can really see it, such a "mysterious" sight with a bright dot of light:

My full report on this bug with more pictures: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/561438/visual-bug-with-some-light-sources-6-months-and-still-not-fixed#latest

Personally, I lost hope that lights will be reverted to pre-Stonethorn state, but I will not forget how beautiful they used to look back then

Northwold · May 2023

Fischblut wrote: »

It wasn't always like this, and I'm very sad to see that it wasn't fixed

Almost 3 years ago, during Stonethorn DLC PTS, something was silently done to lights in the whole game (and this includes housing). It ruined not only the look of environment, but also Worm Wizard personality and Shadow Rider Senche mount.

Unfortunately, if it was changed to this it was most likely a deliberate choice, either to improve performance in and of itself, or to free up the performance "budget" to be able to use it for other things. Either that, or they wanted a more dramatic glow effect and this was the most sensible way to do it, performance wise.