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[Conkerkid11]

The last time I played The Witcher 3, I began to notice some layer of detail on various roads and other pieces of ground terrain appeared to be moving as I walked around, and it began to bother me. I looked up all kinds of variations of "The Witcher 3 floating ground textures", and really couldn't find anything definitive. I also couldn't find any discussion regarding the issue on GAF, but that might even just be because I'm bad at searching GAF.

Is this a bug that's fixable on my end, or is this just the way the devs got away with creating such a massive world with great visuals?

Playing on PC with ultra settings, GTX 970.

Dunno how noticeable it is in these choppy gifs I made. Basically just a layer of detail texturing that's just kind of floating around wherever it wants to. Sometimes it's floating above the ground. Sometimes it is the ground, but it's transparent, so there's noticeably another layer of textures beneath it. It's also pretty much everywhere in the game.

Edit: Here's a video I made that I hope shows it a little better than the gifs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJIEBBarZW8

 

[ADS]

Those gifs are the size of a postage stamp, are we supposed to be able to see something?

 

[Mik2121]

Yeah, that's a bug. It seems like it's the roads and whatnot. I'd assume they're placed with splines, maybe some bug caused them to float above? Do you clip through it, or can you walk on top of it? If you can walk, it'd seem to be some parallax issue, if you clip through it, then yeah the mesh might be floating for some reason.

Weird, lol.

 

[RPGam3r]

Sometime you need a gif, sometimes you need a nice sized screenshot.

 

[Manu]

Ha, I see it on the second gif. That's definitely weird.

For those who can't see it: the dirt road seems to slide over the rest of the ground texture behind Geralt's feet.

 

[jediyoshi]

Those gifs are the size of a postage stamp, are we supposed to be able to see something?

You click media in quotes to view it at its regular size.

I definitely see games applying detail the way this is doing, just not this noticeable. Then again, even in this case unless you're completely focusing on it while simultaneously moving the camera, I wouldn't even call this distracting.

 

[Mik2121]

Sometime you need a gif, sometimes you need a nice sized screenshot.

A screenshot wouldn't help much here. You need to see it moving to tell the floatyness.

 

[RPGam3r]

A screenshot wouldn't help much here. You need to see it moving to tell the floatyness.

When the second gif freezes is when I can just barely see the issue. The proper angle and a still image would be fine.

 

[CHC]

Supposed to be? No.

But a lot of textures on the roads like tire marks, food prints, and puddles, are very thin assets that are hand-placed here and there slightly above the main geometry. It's a huge world so I'm sure it's just somebody SLIGHTLY misaligning the tire-mark texture and then not triple-checking it from every angle.

By and large CDPR do amazing work but they have a habit of leaving tiny bugs or oversights in their games and not patching them. Another case in point - the water in Novigrad's canals. It stops in an invisible wall:

 

[epmode]

Youtube is easy, you should try it.

Anyway, I've seen what you described in a few places in the world. It's usually not very pronounced unless you're really looking for it. Not sure of the cause as I'm not a developer

 

[Blackthorn]

Yeah I spotted this in a few places. Just some textures that weren't spotted during QA, or Geralt tripping off potions if you want to role play real hard.

 

[Mik2121]

What location is that? I haven't played enough of the game, but was wondering if I could go and find that spot!

 

[Rynji]

Noticed this as well, mainly in Blood & Wine.
In some spots it is pretty bad, with the upper texture going above your ankles.

 

[ss_lemonade]

Dunno how noticeable it is in these choppy gifs I made. Basically just a layer of detail texturing that's just kind of floating around wherever it wants to. Sometimes it's floating above the ground. Sometimes it is the ground, but it's transparent, so there's noticeably another layer of textures beneath it. It's also pretty much everywhere in the game.

Hard to tell from those GIFs, but floating? Sounds like those Crysis POM textures. I don't remember noticing this during my W3 playthrough though.

 

[Spiral Insanity]

Imagine naming your child after this guy.

 

[TheAdmiester]

A lot of games do this, I assume that because of just how many do it that it's actually to prevent Z fighting and not a bug.

Basically there are multiple "layers" of textures, and the upper ones are hovering slightly so you can see the bottom layer moving at a different rate to the upper ones when you pan the camera.

It's not a nice thing to see and it's really hard to ever unsee once you do see it. GTA 5 for example has it on most of the arrows you see painted on the roads, and some stretches of asphalt like this:

 

[epmode]

it's actually to prevent Z fighting and not a bug.

Yeah, I think that's true.

(Z fighting is when two overlapping textures flicker. Really irritating.)

 

[Conkerkid11]

Youtube is easy, you should try it.

Anyway, I've seen what you described in a few places in the world. It's usually not very pronounced unless you're really looking for it. Not sure of the cause as I'm not a developer

Took awhile to upload this, but hopefully it does a better job than the gifs. Basically the entire road feels like a massive transparent texture above a solid terrain texture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJIEBBarZW8

A lot of games do this, I assume that because of just how many do it that it's actually to prevent Z fighting and not a bug.

Basically there are multiple "layers" of textures, and the upper ones are hovering slightly so you can see the bottom layer moving at a different rate to the upper ones when you pan the camera.

It's not a nice thing to see and it's really hard to ever unsee once you do see it. GTA 5 for example has it on most of the arrows you see painted on the roads, and some stretches of asphalt like this:

So I've ruined open world games for myself forever.

Great.

 

[Painguy]

W/e tool the artists use probably roughly guesses the shape of the floor. Considering the size of the game this should be expected as artists cant go and accurately map every road. As some user posted, they probably are using some spline tool to draw the shape of the road.

Lot of games use this layering technique. It doesnt have to be this way tho. If you want you can specify a precision curve for your Z buffer where things closer to the camera will have less z fighting if you layer geometry closer to each other. This depends on the game and engine tho. I dont think thats the issue here tho. Just a case of tool behavior.

 

[jediyoshi]

A lot of games do this, I assume that because of just how many do it that it's actually to prevent Z fighting and not a bug.

Moreover, the reason why they do it in the first place is to have varying levels of fidelity on specific surfaces. Say you have a surface

And ingame it could scale up to this size because you walked up to it

If you wanted text on it, you could just add it to the original texture

But when it scales up it'll look like this

So you would make the detail an entirely separate texture and apply it on top of the original in the world

 

[Springfoot]

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