5.4b11/SteamVR Broken SpeedTree LOD Transitions

This might be a known issue, but I haven’t seen it mentioned in the recent beta patch notes. Speedtree lods are going haywire when playing with the HTC Vive. (Playing in editor without VR everything is fine)

  • Scales for different lods seem to be off
  • Transitions seem to snap back and forth a few times before settling

This happens no matter how the lod transition is configured; none, fade, animated, doesn’t make a difference.

I’m on beta 11, SteamVR plugin is up-to-date. I’m not using single-pass stereo rendering. I’ve reimported the speedtree asset and let it regenerate materials, no dice.

Any ideas?

Still trying to figure out what makes it go from working to broken state. Funny thing is I can break them in entirely different ways just by varying parameters of the TreeInstances in the terrain data. Now the billboards are actually OK, but the hero-lod-level explodes:

Still appears this only happens in builds, but this at least is presenting itself in both VR and non-VR builds.

Actually, Unity’s LOD selection seems to change completely when I switch VR support on and off. Without VR a tree is only culled at several kilometers away from the camera, but with VR support they’ll be culled way closer the camera.

Is that a bug or some secret automatic LOD bias being applied?

i would report it as a bug, it is clearly one

@creat327 : Right, I did some more digging, was finally able to make a repro project and submitted a report.

https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?783416_e8f7u4o6v70jsmn4

Great I’m experimenting same thing I call it ghost trees… But I wasn’tbe able to create small repro project for this.
https://virtualo.org/Virtual-O_ghost_trees.avi

Case 781150

That looks like the same issue, yeah! Good to see it’s happening for other people as well. That’s entirely without VR right?

Yeah it’s without using of VR. For me workaround is to build game from scene where speedtrees are living. Than bug is not there.

If I build game for example with mainmenu scene opened. I get ghost trees. So I can choose only one level scene that will be working in result…

And I have this problem only in built game, in editor it’s working normally

I also noticed that scene-specific tricks, yeah.

Had the same problem. Then I realized LODs are based on their size in screenspace. With VR its actual size in screenspace is based on the one screen that is rendered (the double image), rather then it’s relative size to one eye. Bump up the LOD bias in the quality settings. I just detect if a vr device is present and have it adjust the bias so they’re about the same wether I’m testing with vr on or off.

The scene specific trick isn’t working for us, are you guys still seeing the exploding tree’s?

Still same, nothing fixed:
Case 781150

I was contacted by support, they were not able to reproduce it. After my comment what I believe they were doing wrong. No response after that for nearly 2 months.

In meantime, scene specific trick wasn’t working for me after some change, so I must have reverted through source control. Otherwise whole project would be …

Starting to be hopeless. Showstopper with exact repro project although big. And no fix for months.

I do not like to say it but in fact it’s there at least from 10.12.2015 I have created same bug case 752862 for different Unity version. I’m not sure why speedtree bugs are not solved with highest priority. It was an showpiece of Unity 5 release. Something that represents AAA quality inside of Unity…

Both case open. 752862 without reaction. 781150 was at least noticed… Maybe I’m little sad but I need to notice that I’m pro user :slight_smile:

I just posted this beta forum, my problem looks similar. however I am not sure if its the same.

This issue is fixed in beta 21. Can you confirm?

I had this problem before b21, too.
It seems to be working now.

I’ve skipped a couple of betas but I’m on b22 now and this problem is fixed. Thanks!