Soft Shadows not working with ARCore

Unity Engine
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Hi all. I noticed issue during the application engine change.
In Unity 2022.3.5f1 with AR Foundation 5.0.7 with URP - Soft Shadows worked very well.
After I have Upgraded to Unity 2022.3.11f1(and 12f) with AR Foundation 5.1.0 with URP (same project nothing changed) - Soft shadows not working on Android, it displays as Hard shadow. (in editor they work)

After tons of different tries, I understood that if I turn off the Google AR Core from XR Plug-in Management, the soft shadows start work correctly on Android.
Manually changed AR Foundation version back to 5.0.7 but it didn’t help - so I guess it is Unity version issue.

I also noticed a warning message on Light component when setting shadows to Soft, removing AR Core checkmark also removes that warning message.
In URP Settings I have turned on the Soft Shadows, and tested with all quality settings, but issue still there.

In release notes for 2022.3.10 or 11 I read about Soft Shadow keyword for shaders, but I’m not sure what to do with it in my case, or even if it related to this issue or not.

Let me know how to solve, or in which version expect the issue solved. thanks.

2

As you say, this might be an engine issue, which is not our team. Please file a bug. Unity QA: Building quality with passion

3

Sorry to necro, but there has been a bug report for quite some time and it hasn’t been fixed since. Half of my support time for my shadow shaders are saying “it is submitted, we have to wait for a fix”

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4

Thanks for sharing the IssueTracker link. I looked at UUM-76563 internally, and I can see that there is conversation here going back and forth between XR and Unity’s Graphics team. I’ve added the Universal-Render-Pipeline tag to this topic. AR Foundation is not the issue here.

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Thanks. Hopefully it will be fixed soon as soft shadows add a lot to AR/MR experiences.
I tried to filter to what the issue is, but it’s just as soon as ARCore or Oculus XR is enabled. I think it might be because the 2022 changes where XR cannot use per light soft shadow settings (which I still do not understand why. It sounds more logical to have the URP asset setting as the max, and allow lower quality soft shadows per light)

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Adding to this, yes I think this happened when the (annoying) per light soft shadow settings were removed specifically for Android XR devices. Older 2022 versions do seem to work.
Still hoping that this will be fixed sooner rather than later

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Unity doesn’t track bugs reported in Discussions, so just make sure you include any updated information in your bug report. I believe you should be able to access this in Jira via the email you received after filing the bug.

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@andyb-unity may you share any status update that you can see locally in team? Will this be fixed any soon?
Unity 6 LTS has same issue

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I can’t see any new information since my Sept 9 update. I have asked our QA team to try to get an update from the team that owns this issue. Wish there was more I could do here, sorry!

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Hi! I ran into the same issue and managed to find and fix the bug, which turned out to be a stupid copy-paste error in URP code. I posted my solution in a comment on the issue tracker, but I’m copying it here as well for anybody who is looking for this:

This is related to the soft shadow optimization on Quest and HoloLens introduced in 17.0.0 version of URP. It breaks only when the soft shadow quality is set to High.

The bug is in UniversalRenderPipelineCore.cs, in ShaderGlobalKeywords.InitializeShaderGlobalKeywords(). Somebody made a copy-paste error, and forgot to initialize the SoftShadowsHigh field.

As a workaround, you can patch the URP package to add the missing line, or switch to Medium or Low soft shadow quality in the URP asset until the bug is fixed.

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11

Great find!
@andyb-unity can you out this in the internal system?

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XR Graphics team has confirmed that @krzys_h is correct. The SoftShadowsHigh field is not initialized correctly; however, they are unsure if this fix will resolve your originally reported bug @DevDunk. They asked me to create a separate bug ticket for this issue, which will be triaged when the team is back in January. You can find that here once the site updates:

Once this issue is fixed, we’d like you to test whether your originally reported bug is still reproducible.

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Thanks for the quick response! I’m not actually sure whether the ARCore and Quest bugs are the same thing, I just assumed so because people in the comments were complaining that it happens on Quest as well with the exact same symptoms, and both happen only when XR is enabled.

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For the issue I mentioned it also happens in 2022, so it could very well be a different bug. But going into the right direction nevertheless

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can’t check @krzys_h solution as my URP version is 14.
The problem still exist in the Unity 2022.3. On Entire version 3 this issue is not fixed yet.
Unity team please fix on 56f, or provide solution so i can apply it on the project.

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