Bug reports (with details and replication steps)

Hello. I've been experimenting with New Vegas Reloaded for a few weeks, as I've been trying to get a good config for a mod guide I'm writing. The new dynamic shadows do make the game look much better, so good work on that. Also, thank you for your (I imagine) considerable efforts on this project, Alenet. I imagine it has been difficult to try to push this functionality into the game.

I've noticed a few bugs. For background, I'm playing on the Steam version. My AV is set to disable itself while NV is running, and a manual exclusion has been added for MO2, all mod files/folders, and all files/folders in the NV directory. My computer specs are a i9-9900k, a RTX 2080, 32GB of RAM, and a Samsung 970 Pro NVME SSD used as my game drive. With mods, the game runs smoothly at 4K@60fps with dynamic shadows enabled, so performance is generally solid. The same is true without mods.

I've tried to test in a variety of conditions. At least for me, the following bugs are observed both when running the game in a modded state (no ENB, weather mods, or other shaders) and a mostly unmodded state with a brand new save game. Mostly unmodded means launching without MO2, meaning a mostly unmodified vanilla ini config (4k resolution, ultra high preset, vsync and anti-aliasing enabled, and no other ini tweaks), the 4GB patch, NVSE, New Vegas Heap Replacer, and the DSOAL drivers. I haven't tested with all of those disabled too.

Enabling ambient occlusion causes a bug where screen space effects are frozen on the screen when you first initiate dialogue after starting a new game or loading a save. This can be replicated in Goodsprings by creating a new game or loading a save and talking to a NPC. This is not a big deal, as it's disabled by default. Also, AO can be forced through GPU drivers for most GPU's in use today, and I've confirmed that this works well in New Vegas and seems fully compatible with New Vegas Reloaded. As such, a fix may not be needed, and It may be simpler to simply comment that the feature is bugged in the ini file, so people don't enable it.

Enabling volumetric fog causes a bug where weather (color and lighting) effects transition instantly (typically turning off inappropriately and staying off) when crossing certain points (I believe these are cell transitions). This can be replicated most noticeably when walking down the road in Goodsprings toward Primm. It actually can happen within Primm itself, after starting a new game, by walking on the road through town.

Enabling underwater effects causes a bug where the underwater shader is enabled in some areas below a certain elevation (below sea level is my guess), even if there is no water. This can be replicated by entering the underpass at Primm (the lowered area between the NCR encampment and the town proper).

There's also a bug with dynamic shadows during the twilight hours. Certain patches of terrain will not cast a shadow, causing a section of sunlight to visibly shine through a mountain and onto terrain and objects, with shadows all around this mysterious patch of sunlight. This is observable during the twilight hours at the edge of the New Vegas map. This can be replicated by going to a building on the far western edge of Goodsprings and waiting until about 5 PM. I suggest going to the Goodsprings schoolhouse and watching the far western door (the one that has been boarded up). The bug will appear starting at around 6:00 PM, and it will be prominently noticeable soon after. This seems like it could possibly be a bug with the terrain itself, in that it wasn't flagged properly in some way because they weren't expecting dynamic shadows.

I have been testing to try to find a reliable explanation and replication steps for the shadow flickering bug. I have not really been successful. Here is what I have found so far, if it is useful to you.

The bug appears to be deterministically triggered by something in the world, though I'm not exactly certain by what. One example is that it can be semi-reliably triggered by crossing a certain line that runs eastward through the southernmost destroyed house in Goodsprings (next to Victor's shack), or even by loading in close to that same line. You can observe this reliably in brand new games created during a fresh game session, and also after loading a save for the first time during a fresh game session. This boundary actually seems really similar to that of the weather effect bug, so it may again be related to cell boundaries or some other kind of transition. There is another line which runs through Primm. You can observe it as you approach the tents at the heart of the NCR camp west of Primm.

Once flickering has started, it will persist through saving. That is, if you save while this bug is occurring, it will always reoccur when you load that save again during a fresh game session. However, once it has started in a given area, the bug resolves itself in short order, typically between 2 and 5 seconds. I have seen it last long for others, which means it may be dependent on system horsepower or the efficiency of one's mods. Once it has resolved itself in this way, it will not reoccur in that same area during that same session, even if you reload the same save which always causes it on first load.

I do not understand the engine well enough to make sense of this. If I had to venture a guess, perhaps it is related to the loading of cells or assets? It seems to be permanently resolved as long as that same area is either currently loaded or still available through cache.

I hope this is useful in some way.

Thank you for the detailed report.
For the water, i must fix it. It depends on the water planes level in interiors.
About the shadow flickering or other shadow issue, try to use the post processing shading isntead the forward one (set quality to -1); not all shaders has been replaced to cast totally the shadows.
The rest (ao, volumetric fog, etc) is due to the 1st person camera, you must use the camera mode. 1st person vanilla camera cannot support at all the NVR effects.

Thanks for the reply. I'll attempt these fixes when I can and add another reply later saying the results.

I can confirm I'm also encountering those issues in these exact same locations, such as the underwater effect showing up when going through Primm's Underpass, and also a bit further down the road towards the Mojave Outpost.

I've tried the fix for the flickering shadows and it didn't work. I changed the shadow quality to -1 in shadows.ini in the Shaders folder

[Exteriors]
Darkness = 0.005
Quality = 1
ShadowMapFarPlane = 16384.0

but I found myself with very dark shadows instead, and the flickering persisted even on a new save file. You can see the effect on the screenshot below.


After some testing, I realized the dark shadows were potentially caused by my ENB in this particular case, however after disabling the ENB, NVR's shadows were gone entirely when setting the value to -1. My ENB's settings are already set to be pretty much unintrusive and play nice with NVR (Only Adaptation, Sun Rays, Sun Glare and Color correction are turned on), so I don't know what I can do beyond removing the ENB entirely, and that still wouldn't solve every issue caused by NVR.

I tried both fixes.

I enabled the NVR camera.  The head bob and camera movement while turning in place are a bit heavy for me, to the point where they make me a little motion sick.  I don't think I'll be able to use it.

I experimented with -1 shadow quality too.  This resulted in nearly black shadows that seemed to look significantly worse.  It seemed preferable to simply tolerate the brief flickering, since it's hardly a constant thing. Since the poster above mentioned ENB, I want to clarify that I'm not using ENB at all, and I had a similar issue.

For the moment, I think I might just use the default 1st person camera, disable most of the effects, and primarily use NVR for shadows and performance.

EVERYTHING can be set as you prefer using the inis and the ingame menu. If you want to adjust the shadow darkness, use the ingame menu and change the darkness value.

I can confirm shadow flickering happens even without any mods or any plugins.  

I did a bit of testing and I think the flicker is caused by objects that change position in the scene.  

For example if you Z grab objects while in shadow such as a Whiskey Bottle it will be brightly lit like vanilla game until you drop the bottle and then will flicker briefly and settle back into shadow.

The length of the shadow flicker depends on the complexity of the meshes that have changed position. A small object that was moved recently will flicker for less than 1 sec but something like Duchess Gambit (the boat that takes you to Point Lookout) will flicker for 3-5 seconds since is much more complex. Is possible that areas of the map have very large moving statics that cause entire areas to force lighting updates. Duchess Gambit consistently triggers updates whenever I'm in specific locations such as just about to step on it or on the second deck looking at the city.

I think what we perceive as shadow flickering is not really shadow flickering at all. I think when meshes change position or shape the scene is gonna update and while that's happening the mod quickly moves between Vanilla lighting and dynamic lighting on alternating frames until the scene is resolved and will settle to dynamic lighting.