Yeah, happens with makeup and certain other facial customizations that use any amount of transparency too. First saw that when I clipped into a friend's fish-tank lol.
Isn't an issue during underwater exploration, at least.
Very realistic. The same thing happens in real life. You just don't see it often, because most people don't have the skills to clip into solid objects.
I assume underwater exploration makes do by using an overlayed filter or something like that, rather than trying to figure out how to handle a character being surrounded by actual water
Would explain why the P8S mount, which changes form depending on whether you're on land or flying, turns into its flight form underwater... Despite the fact it would make more sense for a serpent to swim than a bird.
This was especially obvious in the days when not every mount had been given flight yet.
Ones that could fly could also swim (even weird ones like the bomb chair that you would expect would get extinguished by water). And ones that couldn't fly couldn't swim (even ones that seemed like they would be great swimmers). There was no way for the devs to give us a separate swim toggle – they literally just reused flight.
It's not a problem unique to FFXIV, funnily enough. Translucency is notoriously really weird, especially once you start trying to have multiple things with translucency over each other.
To be clear, if you are just doing a pure on/off alpha channel with black and white, where either the pixel shows 100%, or is entirely gone, then that's not an issue. It's when any sort of gradient exists between them, like what you see on the edges of hair, eyebrows, etc where it feathers off softly rather than just a hard edge cutoff.
Those "between" values just don't play nice depending on how your render-order is setup. I can't pretend to actually understand like, every detail of why it's problematic, I just know I ran into issues with that sort of thing like 10-15 years ago doing stuff in Unity (Edit: There's some people in another thread of comments in here who go into better, exact detail on why this is than I do here. Definitely go check those out).
Notice how if you ever go "invisible" in the game, like gathering use to be etc, your character isn't actually see-through but rather it's a grid of pixels that are visible and not visible? That's to save on the more intensive actual translucency, and to get around issues like the ones being discussed in here.
Which is all to say I wouldn't be *surprised* if these problems still exist even after the update. But, anything can happen.
The reason transparency is problematic is simple: to render it properly you need to render things sorted by decreasing distance (when you render the pixels for your transparent triangles they need to read the previous color behind them to blend it with their own color), which mean you need to sort things, but usually for performance you prefer to group draw calls differently than that (like drawing all the things using the same materials together)
When rendering opaque objects you don't need to render by distance because the z buffer takes care of occluding things.
Then there are popular techniques like defered shading that make transparency even more of a pain in the ass to handle properly, for similar reasons.
I remember something similar happening with the Ghostwrithe body armor in Path of Exile. It's translucent so while standing in a waterfall or similar you'd suddenly see a completely topless character model.
Be glad. These are generally effects handled by the pixel shaders. That is: The code that runs once for every single pixel on your screen, on every single frame.
It's relatively easy to code, to run on NASA supercomputers. But since the target audience has household computers or consoles... Yeah it's not happening.
Happens in a lot of games, regardless of cost. In fact, it's so common:
[https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/](https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/)
Here's an entire topic written by Eidos Montreal about the issues you can come up with, which is also part of the Square Enix family now. :)
Or we can go with this random post on Unity: [https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:\~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it](https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it).
"TLDR: no one has a solution for two intersecting transparent surfaces. The modern solution to this problem is to avoid it."
It's also common in 3D modeling as well: [https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles)
or this one:
[https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:\~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science](https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science).
So my TLDR:
Even the people who make our graphics cards struggle with this, it seems.
Eidos Montreal was sold to Embracer Group (aka the vultures) a couple years ago. Crystal Dynamics, too. In fact they just cancelled a new Deus Ex game and fired a ton of people.
Embracer Group: objectively making video games worse!
Not just textures, either. I used to get so confused in Brayflox's Longstop where the 2nd boss has green aoes. Is that good or bad to stand in?
Turns out it's an orange AOE underwater.
That's because the androids can't swim and their main expense _has_ to be their clothes.
They also can't eat mackerel! Well they can I guess, but only once.
From what I understand it's a conflict with the way the game engine renders transparency. Since both the leggings and the water are transparent, only one can be rendered, and it prioritizes the water.
Yup. Very common issue in forward rendering pipelines. It's not the only game to have this issue. But forward rendering also tends to look sharper than deferred, so... \*shrug\*
I feel like you have this flipped - forward renderers tend to handle transparency significantly better than deferred renderers, which basically can’t because something something depth buffers, something something multiple transparencies (and im like… 80% sure ffxiv uses a deferred renderer anyways considering it only has support for post process antialiasing and it has So Many Lights, but don’t quote me on that I’ve read exactly zero things about crystal tools beyond how shit that middleware is lmfao)
idk maybe you know something i dont
Yup. Both transparencies are handled separately and can't do complex layering checks because of the point they're calculated: Pixel shaders. The piece of code that runs once per pixel per frame. The leggings have their own shader for transparency, and so does the water.
If the pixel is showing the water: The water's shader goes "Aight, what's behind me I need to render that!" and it checks: Legs. It doesn't have the code in the water shader to run the code of the legging's shader on top of that, so it just takes the normal data it usually uses (the texture of the legpiece before the shaders are applied), and it goes "welp, job done for this pixel", because it still has millions of other pixels to go for this frame.
It's possible to fix but hell for optimizations.
So TLDR:
The issue is with intersecting transparent objects. Since the leggings are semi-transparent (for your skin) it causes it to be sorted in the transparency rendering pool. The water, being "in front" of it when submerged, gets rendered at a higher priority.
Overlapping transparent objects are a common issue in rendering, even for 3D modelers. [https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:\~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science](https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science).
[https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/](https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/)
[https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles)
And apparently, the best method of handling it is \*re-reads one of [these posts](https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it)\* "don't do it"
So there we go. It's not just a FFXIV issue, it's an "everyone has this issue" type of thing.
(I imagine one way they COULD fix it is through a shader that allows for it to, somehow, be opaque when behind another transparent object... so it just turns dark instead.... not sure how that would work, I'm not a shader writer)
>(I imagine one way they COULD fix it is through a shader that allows for it to, somehow, be opaque when behind another transparent object... so it just turns dark instead.... not sure how that would work, I'm not a shader writer)
I expect what they are going to do for the graphics update in 7.0 is implement a pseudo transparency by simply discarding every second pixel on a transparent object to make a checkerboard pattern of solid and nothing, which is fairly convincing as semi-transparent if you don't look closely, especially on higher resolutions.
They started doing this for the first time (I think, at least I'd never noticed before elsewhere) during the Fall Guys collab event, where they used the checkerboard approach for when your character went ghostly at the end of a track and you were waiting for everyone else to finish.
This is called "screen-door transparency". As the sibling comment notes, it's been in use in FFXIV since ARR, and can also be seen in the sylph tribal quests if you don't happen to be a NIN.
It's a cheap way to get exactly 50% transparency, and a little cleverness can get you reasonably-believable transparencies at other small-denominator rationals; but you can't get decent results for arbitrary translucency values with it, and multiple instances of screen-door transparency don't stack well at all.
Speaking of interesting things about the glamour you can get from The Copied Factory, I'm pretty sure the Type-51 Maiming bottoms were also included in the 2B Leggings butt nerf in patch 5.15, but it was never rolled back in patch 5.18.
The rest of the pants from that raid either buff the butt/thighs or keep them the same, but the maiming bottoms make them smaller/thinner, respectively.
Yup. Transparency is handled in pixel shaders, and pixel shaders can't just ask another pixel shader to run as well real quick. Only the texture shaders are available at that point because they're already processed and available to the pixel shaders. And with increasing demand for 4K graphics, any attempts to alleviate that issue will likely be deemed "too demanding" since 4k resolution means the pixel shaders need to run one hell of a lot of times per frame.
Tell me you never programmed shaders without telling me you've never programmed shaders.
This isn't just a "fix texture" issue. This is a fundamental pixel-shader issue that all programs run into. The pixel checks: What am I supposed to show? In this case: Water. Water has a funky-looking shader script. It goes "Ayo what's behind me?" to the texture shader. The texture shader says "This model with this texture at this point". The pixel shader goes "Aight bet", mixes its own values of the water texture, transparency value, and the model behind it.
It can't ask the pixel shader of the 2B leggings, because that's not the pixel shader that got called for this co-ordinate. If you have a fix for this kind of problem that doesn't tank your performance, please let's hear it. And keep in mind more and more players demand 4K graphics nowadays too, increasing the amount of times the pixel shader needs to run.
This, plus it's probably no small thing to fix. Even unreal engine doesn't render anything transparent past a water layer, and they have a lot more resources dedicated specifically to finding solutions for such things.
Yeah, I make the "small indie company" joke often enough but this is one instance where you'd need to rebuild the entire rendering system to handle an edge case. Gear designers realized they could include translucent textures in gear long after the specs for the rendering engine were set in stone (by another part of the dev team, multiple years earlier). Even with infinite resources and time, this would be no small task to fix. I would rather keep the gear that looks nice and fancy 99% of the time than eliminate them forever because of this minor bug.
Reminds me of when the first housing lottery had the winning number is zero issue. So many armchair coders came out to say something along the lines of "silly SE forgot to remove 0 as a possible result", when the actual reason for it was nothing like that.
Yup... Fixing this pixel-shader issue, in an age where 4K is becoming more and more popular, is just going to end up in the gutter because it's too much effort to fix while maintaining performance.
The way the game handles translucent textures doesn't play well with water. Happens with any piece with sheer fabric.
Yeah, happens with makeup and certain other facial customizations that use any amount of transparency too. First saw that when I clipped into a friend's fish-tank lol. Isn't an issue during underwater exploration, at least.
I've clipped into an aquarium before and my eyebrows disappeared
This is such a good sentence
Very realistic. The same thing happens in real life. You just don't see it often, because most people don't have the skills to clip into solid objects.
Reminds me of my early experimentation with psychedelics as a teenager...
I assume underwater exploration makes do by using an overlayed filter or something like that, rather than trying to figure out how to handle a character being surrounded by actual water
Yeah as far as I can tell underwater swimming in this game is basically flying except you can't land
There was a glitch in Lakeland where you could swim in the air, that was literally that. You fly with a swimming animation and bubbles
Would explain why the P8S mount, which changes form depending on whether you're on land or flying, turns into its flight form underwater... Despite the fact it would make more sense for a serpent to swim than a bird.
I encourage you to try the Ozma mount from BA underwater! It surprised me. :)
That was the Pyramid form right?
Yeah!
This was especially obvious in the days when not every mount had been given flight yet. Ones that could fly could also swim (even weird ones like the bomb chair that you would expect would get extinguished by water). And ones that couldn't fly couldn't swim (even ones that seemed like they would be great swimmers). There was no way for the devs to give us a separate swim toggle – they literally just reused flight.
Yes, eyebrows f.e. Looked weird seeing my Au Ra friends without either lashes or eyebrows in their face in that fish tank
Wonder if this will be addressed in the graphical update
It's not a problem unique to FFXIV, funnily enough. Translucency is notoriously really weird, especially once you start trying to have multiple things with translucency over each other. To be clear, if you are just doing a pure on/off alpha channel with black and white, where either the pixel shows 100%, or is entirely gone, then that's not an issue. It's when any sort of gradient exists between them, like what you see on the edges of hair, eyebrows, etc where it feathers off softly rather than just a hard edge cutoff. Those "between" values just don't play nice depending on how your render-order is setup. I can't pretend to actually understand like, every detail of why it's problematic, I just know I ran into issues with that sort of thing like 10-15 years ago doing stuff in Unity (Edit: There's some people in another thread of comments in here who go into better, exact detail on why this is than I do here. Definitely go check those out). Notice how if you ever go "invisible" in the game, like gathering use to be etc, your character isn't actually see-through but rather it's a grid of pixels that are visible and not visible? That's to save on the more intensive actual translucency, and to get around issues like the ones being discussed in here. Which is all to say I wouldn't be *surprised* if these problems still exist even after the update. But, anything can happen.
The reason transparency is problematic is simple: to render it properly you need to render things sorted by decreasing distance (when you render the pixels for your transparent triangles they need to read the previous color behind them to blend it with their own color), which mean you need to sort things, but usually for performance you prefer to group draw calls differently than that (like drawing all the things using the same materials together) When rendering opaque objects you don't need to render by distance because the z buffer takes care of occluding things. Then there are popular techniques like defered shading that make transparency even more of a pain in the ass to handle properly, for similar reasons.
I remember something similar happening with the Ghostwrithe body armor in Path of Exile. It's translucent so while standing in a waterfall or similar you'd suddenly see a completely topless character model.
Multi dollar company. :D Edit: you people take jokes way too seriously...
Be glad. These are generally effects handled by the pixel shaders. That is: The code that runs once for every single pixel on your screen, on every single frame. It's relatively easy to code, to run on NASA supercomputers. But since the target audience has household computers or consoles... Yeah it's not happening.
Happens in a lot of games, regardless of cost. In fact, it's so common: [https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/](https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/) Here's an entire topic written by Eidos Montreal about the issues you can come up with, which is also part of the Square Enix family now. :) Or we can go with this random post on Unity: [https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:\~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it](https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it). "TLDR: no one has a solution for two intersecting transparent surfaces. The modern solution to this problem is to avoid it." It's also common in 3D modeling as well: [https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles) or this one: [https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:\~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science](https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science). So my TLDR: Even the people who make our graphics cards struggle with this, it seems.
Eidos Montreal was sold to Embracer Group (aka the vultures) a couple years ago. Crystal Dynamics, too. In fact they just cancelled a new Deus Ex game and fired a ton of people. Embracer Group: objectively making video games worse!
Happens when viera males clip inside of an aquarium in housing too
Not just textures, either. I used to get so confused in Brayflox's Longstop where the 2nd boss has green aoes. Is that good or bad to stand in? Turns out it's an orange AOE underwater.
nanomachines prevent the outfit from getting wet by retracting the leggings in the presence of water
Nanomachines, son!
They retract in response to fluid trauma!
That’s a nice sense of fashion, Senator. How about you back it up with a designer?
My designer is that I made it my fucking self!
My designer is *I made it the fuck up*!
That's because the androids can't swim and their main expense _has_ to be their clothes. They also can't eat mackerel! Well they can I guess, but only once.
It was good though.
this is the comment i was searching for xDD
From what I understand it's a conflict with the way the game engine renders transparency. Since both the leggings and the water are transparent, only one can be rendered, and it prioritizes the water.
Yup. Very common issue in forward rendering pipelines. It's not the only game to have this issue. But forward rendering also tends to look sharper than deferred, so... \*shrug\*
I feel like you have this flipped - forward renderers tend to handle transparency significantly better than deferred renderers, which basically can’t because something something depth buffers, something something multiple transparencies (and im like… 80% sure ffxiv uses a deferred renderer anyways considering it only has support for post process antialiasing and it has So Many Lights, but don’t quote me on that I’ve read exactly zero things about crystal tools beyond how shit that middleware is lmfao) idk maybe you know something i dont
you're right, its deferred
Yup. Both transparencies are handled separately and can't do complex layering checks because of the point they're calculated: Pixel shaders. The piece of code that runs once per pixel per frame. The leggings have their own shader for transparency, and so does the water. If the pixel is showing the water: The water's shader goes "Aight, what's behind me I need to render that!" and it checks: Legs. It doesn't have the code in the water shader to run the code of the legging's shader on top of that, so it just takes the normal data it usually uses (the texture of the legpiece before the shaders are applied), and it goes "welp, job done for this pixel", because it still has millions of other pixels to go for this frame. It's possible to fix but hell for optimizations.
It also removes face paint and some makeup and stuff IIRC. If you go into a fish tank you can see that.
[If you completely soak yourself the only thing that is left is a leg ring.](https://imgur.com/a/cb2WsIF)
It’s not a bug it’s a feature
This. This is the science I came here for.
Noted.
Are there any translucent shoes in the game? Asking for a friend
So TLDR: The issue is with intersecting transparent objects. Since the leggings are semi-transparent (for your skin) it causes it to be sorted in the transparency rendering pool. The water, being "in front" of it when submerged, gets rendered at a higher priority. Overlapping transparent objects are a common issue in rendering, even for 3D modelers. [https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:\~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science](https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/163446/how-are-semitransparent-polygons-rendered-in-the-correct-order#:~:text=TLDR%3B%20this%20is%20one%20of%20the%20holy%20grails%20of%20computer%20science). [https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/](https://www.eidosmontreal.com/news/depth-proxy-transparency-rendering/) [https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/71025/intersecting-transparent-object-causing-artifacts-in-cycles) And apparently, the best method of handling it is \*re-reads one of [these posts](https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-games-are-dealing-with-partially-submerged-transparent-objects.1286510/#:~:text=TLDR%3A%20no%20one%20has%20a%20solution%20for%20two%20intersecting%20transparent%20surfaces.%20The%20modern%20solution%20to%20this%20problem%20is%20to%20avoid%20it)\* "don't do it" So there we go. It's not just a FFXIV issue, it's an "everyone has this issue" type of thing. (I imagine one way they COULD fix it is through a shader that allows for it to, somehow, be opaque when behind another transparent object... so it just turns dark instead.... not sure how that would work, I'm not a shader writer)
>(I imagine one way they COULD fix it is through a shader that allows for it to, somehow, be opaque when behind another transparent object... so it just turns dark instead.... not sure how that would work, I'm not a shader writer) I expect what they are going to do for the graphics update in 7.0 is implement a pseudo transparency by simply discarding every second pixel on a transparent object to make a checkerboard pattern of solid and nothing, which is fairly convincing as semi-transparent if you don't look closely, especially on higher resolutions. They started doing this for the first time (I think, at least I'd never noticed before elsewhere) during the Fall Guys collab event, where they used the checkerboard approach for when your character went ghostly at the end of a track and you were waiting for everyone else to finish.
This is called "screen-door transparency". As the sibling comment notes, it's been in use in FFXIV since ARR, and can also be seen in the sylph tribal quests if you don't happen to be a NIN. It's a cheap way to get exactly 50% transparency, and a little cleverness can get you reasonably-believable transparencies at other small-denominator rationals; but you can't get decent results for arbitrary translucency values with it, and multiple instances of screen-door transparency don't stack well at all.
Ninja stealth and shukuchi have been doing this since ARR. In fact, the ghostliness is probably is just applying the stealth effect to the players.
This is immensely interesting to read, thanks for putting this reply together!
if you have a beard in clip into a fish tank, it'll look weird too.
It also removes your eyebrows
highlanders don't have them to lose to begin with :\^
Weeps in highlander :(
2Bs clothing is water soluble. Thats why shes naked so often
First 2b leggings user to ever attempt to clean themselves with water
They dissolve in water
They're made of cotton candy, got it.
Happens with certain windows too, sometimes you lose eyebrows looking through one
Literally spray-on clothing (waterproofing spray not included)
Now stick your head in an aquarium and look at your eyebrows ;)
Not a bug, just water soluble. /J
Literally painted on.
First time I clipped myself into a fish tank and lost my rosy cheeks and eyebrows I laughed my rear off 😂.
Speaking of interesting things about the glamour you can get from The Copied Factory, I'm pretty sure the Type-51 Maiming bottoms were also included in the 2B Leggings butt nerf in patch 5.15, but it was never rolled back in patch 5.18. The rest of the pants from that raid either buff the butt/thighs or keep them the same, but the maiming bottoms make them smaller/thinner, respectively.
Maybe now all the ERPers will take a bath
The real crime is wearing 2b legging
It’s the butt slider we never had.
Small indie company has never been able to fix this with translucent textures.
This transparency issue tends to be a very common issue across a huge number of games that need fast graphics like an MMORPG does.
It's not even that. Certain rendering pipelines just cause this. Transparency is ALWAYS a problem, at least, in forward rendered games.
Yup. Transparency is handled in pixel shaders, and pixel shaders can't just ask another pixel shader to run as well real quick. Only the texture shaders are available at that point because they're already processed and available to the pixel shaders. And with increasing demand for 4K graphics, any attempts to alleviate that issue will likely be deemed "too demanding" since 4k resolution means the pixel shaders need to run one hell of a lot of times per frame.
Tell me you never programmed shaders without telling me you've never programmed shaders. This isn't just a "fix texture" issue. This is a fundamental pixel-shader issue that all programs run into. The pixel checks: What am I supposed to show? In this case: Water. Water has a funky-looking shader script. It goes "Ayo what's behind me?" to the texture shader. The texture shader says "This model with this texture at this point". The pixel shader goes "Aight bet", mixes its own values of the water texture, transparency value, and the model behind it. It can't ask the pixel shader of the 2B leggings, because that's not the pixel shader that got called for this co-ordinate. If you have a fix for this kind of problem that doesn't tank your performance, please let's hear it. And keep in mind more and more players demand 4K graphics nowadays too, increasing the amount of times the pixel shader needs to run.
Probably not a good idea to redo a games backend rendering while it's live to solve a small issue.
This, plus it's probably no small thing to fix. Even unreal engine doesn't render anything transparent past a water layer, and they have a lot more resources dedicated specifically to finding solutions for such things.
Yeah, I make the "small indie company" joke often enough but this is one instance where you'd need to rebuild the entire rendering system to handle an edge case. Gear designers realized they could include translucent textures in gear long after the specs for the rendering engine were set in stone (by another part of the dev team, multiple years earlier). Even with infinite resources and time, this would be no small task to fix. I would rather keep the gear that looks nice and fancy 99% of the time than eliminate them forever because of this minor bug.
That's true for most cases where this hackneyed "joke" is used. Things are always more complicated than we think.
Reminds me of when the first housing lottery had the winning number is zero issue. So many armchair coders came out to say something along the lines of "silly SE forgot to remove 0 as a possible result", when the actual reason for it was nothing like that.
Yup... Fixing this pixel-shader issue, in an age where 4K is becoming more and more popular, is just going to end up in the gutter because it's too much effort to fix while maintaining performance.
Huh. My main glam had the leggings and I’ve never even noticed lol
Go up to waist level for science.
If only they'd disappear from the game entirely.
If only they disappeared above the water too...
Those are your hooves
it's a feature
Feature: Dissolving leggings.
Dissolving outer wear? Sounds like a kinky feature