Why do all custom URP shaders have this solid circle of environment lighting at a distance?

Unity Engine
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This effect looks super obvious, like something I’ve forgotten existed along the way (and hopefully it is)…

Why do I have this solid circle at about 250 units from the editor and game cameras? I ignored it in my main project because it primarily affected the editor camera, but noticed it creeping in as an artifact on the game camera. I’ve traced it back to an environment lighting effect.

In this screenshot, I have a new scene with nothing in it except a camera and a 400x400 cube with a new, unchanged URP shader graph shader assigned to it:

8487560--1129013--shaderIssue_GI_distanceSolid_09-bareMinimum.PNG
8487560--1129013--shaderIssue_GI_distanceSolid_09-bareMinimum.PNG1703×814 57.5 KB

The thing is, it only affects custom URP shader graph shaders, and it affects all of them. If I use a built-in URP shader like Complex Lit, this affect is absent. The material in this screenshot is a brand new URP Lit shader with no changes and hasn’t even been opened. This distinction, to me, is the most important for identifying why it exists at all.

  • Unity fog is disabled. Enabling it shows a separate effect.

  • It’s not clipping distance either, which I tested by adjusting the editor camera’s limits.

  • Using the Rendering Debugger, it appears with the Lighting Feature = Global Illumination. All lighting data is, of course, cleared.

  • It happens regardless what skybox material is assigned. I had to trace backwards and eliminate a separate one.

  • It shows up in the editor camera and in game cameras. I can’t be sure it’s present in my VR project but I suspect it, and can’t rule it out until I get this out of my head.

  • It gets color from the reflection probe when present or the settings fallback.

  • It’s more apparent with higher smoothness values.

  • Even when specular highlights and environment lighting are disabled via tags (_ENVIRONMENTREFLECTIONS_OFF, _SPECULARHIGHLIGHTS_OFF), it’s still subtly present.

  • It’s present whether the shader is set to opaque or any form of transparent, with or without alpha clipping or shadows, and metallic/specular.

  • Depth texture is disabled.

How do I get rid of this effect? It affects every single lit custom shader in my project.

Unity 2021.3.1f1 - URP
URP asset settings for potential insight:

8487560--1129016--shaderIssue_GI_distanceSolid_10-URPsettings.PNG
8487560--1129016--shaderIssue_GI_distanceSolid_10-URPsettings.PNG524×972 49.2 KB

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Please file a bug report with the project attached if this also happens in the latest LTS!
Also attach a link to this post for clarification

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Updating to the most recent LTS fixed it, so it’s apparently an issue that was already corrected somewhere along the line, or it’s something I managed to break by flipping an unknown switch.

In any case it was limited to my machine and not reproducing itself in other people’s copy of the project.

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