SSAO line artifacts and alternative.

Hi,
When using SSAO with a large far clip plane are very ugly artifacts. At the minimum I can comfortably use the far clip plane at (10k, for silverlining clouds) i still get some small artifacts. Is the an alternative way to controls the precision of the depth buffer or another way to avoid the issue? Is there a HBAO (or other algo) or better SSAO implementation? I’m using the SSAO with exp2 fog shader.

Cheers,
Loki

Hi there, we ran into a similar issue with our skybox at 15k. I’m not sure if a different algorithm would help as it would still use the same buffer. We have ended up using 2 cameras, one for the sky at 15k, and another main cam with a much smaller far clip ~1000. IIRC increasing the MinZ value helped also, but that was more of a bandaid.

(On a side note, would you recommend Silverlining? We’ve been considering it :slight_smile: )

Silverlining has very pretty clouds, but the documentation is a bit limited and they do cost a bit to render. (worth it if you’re close to them) We had a few confusing issues that Sundog helped with very promptly. Great customer service.

I’d still rather like my 10k is clip plane, because it’s a very large map.

Depth buffer imprecision is going to be a factor no matter what given the size of your far clip. Have you tried experimenting with spraycanmansam’s suggestion of two cameras?

Alas long draw distances are part of the aesthetic of the game, so I’m a bit confused about how that would work. With the sky only option it’s easy because you just set the masks. If you want the distant terrain / rocks etc to still be displayed but not have SSAO (or have it with different settings) but have the nearer objects have SSAO that sounds very challenging to me. I was hopeful someone else had already attempted SSAO on large outdoor scenes, given that you can’t bake lightmaps on large size maps. Artifacts are currently pretty minimal though, so i’m not too worried.