Disapperaing shadows when moving/turning

[AliasNick]

I have the same problem and it's driving me in-f***ing-sane because of its sporadic/random nature.

My original testing sessions
- Launching through MO2 with nothing but the cleaned ESMs and skse scripts.
- Upon main menu loading done / console 'coc riverwood' / move around / scroll to 3rd person / move around while moving the mouse / console 'qqq' (exquisitely satisfying in these troubleshooting times)
- Repeat 3 times without changing anything

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I have tried A LOT of A/B testing scenarios like all the other poor souls in this thread. I will elaborate on them here in this very reply eventually.
One thing is for sure, shaders are, so far, not the issue. Or if it is, it is combined to some other behaviour. This is also why I'm writing this post without elaborating on my previous attempts, as I think I found yet another clue which was not thoroughly explored in previous replies.

*Tests will be inserted here later.*

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Test #428372 - From system file read access issues to faulty INIs
Context: Since my MO2 mod folder is entirely backed up in MS OneDrive. The last reply by @Glanzer made it clear that my problem was related to this. Or so I thought, unfortunately I was able to replicate the problem with OneDrive sync paused and my antivirus turned off. I flipped a table or two then closed MO2. I copied the skse scripts manually in my install folder located in another drive (away from OneDrive) and launched my game from the skse loader directly. After 3 numerous attempt, it, f***ing, worked. I was not ready to declare it a win. Obviously I will have to use MO2 in the end. This is when I remembered that I use profile-specific saves and INI settings. Since MO2 was out of the equation, it led me back to my INIs. I backed up my old, forgotten but working ~/Documents/*.ini and replaced them with my INI from MO2. AUTOMATICALLY I was able to replicate the issue. 3 times with profile INIs, the bug was there. I restored my old INIs and it was working without an issue again.

Ladies & gentlemen, an age-old, issue-inducing modding plague causing these kind of issues? While proudly using BethINI?! And that no bulls*** guides will see its "fixes" appear in my files unless I know the author is well-known and/or knowledgeable on the subject. I would not have been surprised of this situation if the ProfileRedirector mod was on due to the fact that it caches INIs and might break stuff, but since it wasn't, the testing is aiming in that direction, INI issues. Even though I'm not 100% sure yet, more like 90% sure.

I will be reviewing each lines of my defective "oh-so-perfect-BethINI-generated-INIs" against my old, trash but working ones. Like I said, I will keep you all informed here. Never give up.

Update:
- I backed up both my working and not working INIs.
- I recreated my with BethINI from scratch. Using these settings. Every changed setting I would save INIs and run Skyrim to test.

 

// Activated Recommended Tweaks

 

// Used Beth INI Ultra Preset

 

[Combat]
bForceNPCsUseAmmo was changed from 0 to 1

[General]
bBorderRegionsEnabled was changed from 1 to 0

[bethesda.net]
bEnablePlatform was changed from 1 to 0

[Display]
bLockFrameRate was changed from 1 to 0

[MapMenu]
bWorldMapNoSkyDepthBlur was changed from 0 to 1
fWorldMapDepthBlurScale was changed from 0.3000 to 0
fWorldMapMaximumDepthBlur was changed from 0.4500 to 0
fWorldMapNearDepthBlurScale was changed from 4.0000 to 0

[Display]
bSAOEnable was changed from 1 to 0 // Using ENB SAO

[Display]
bScreenSpaceReflectionEnabled was changed from 1 to 0 // Using ENB SSR

[Display]
bUse64bitsHDRRenderTarget was changed from 1 to 0 // Trying to squeeze extra performance

 

- Tested out those fresh INIs both outside and inside MO2. (profiles vs documents) Everything worked.
- Tested loading the game with read-only INIs, nothing triggered.
- Reviewed every line to see any changes between the newly crafted and the broken ones.
- Copying the lines from the broken INIs that were not in the new ones did nothing to break the game.

It's just working. And I'm kind of pissed that I cannot replicate the issue, because I still haven't found what is causing it! I have but speculations to make after all this. Need further testing. Here is what changed from last time:

- I did not generate nor use a SkyrimCustom.ini anymore.

- My files are not read-only, even though I tested those and it made no change.

 

I will edit this again if something come up. If someone wants to take the torch from here, please do so!

[Glanzer]

Great write up! Glad someone else is looking into it. I'll think for a while about what you wrote and maybe I can find a program that will monitor open files and directories so that I can prove things one way or the other. And I'll see if I can actually reproduce the problem consistently too. I paused my backups and that seemed to fix it for me, but every now and then it would still happen. That might be because the backup program is still monitoring which files it has to back up and still is putting some kind of read lock on the files even though it's not backing them up. The only way to really be sure is to completely shut the back up down by stopping its service and disabling the service and then rebooting the machine. I haven't come that far yet.

[yugen69]

I have the same issue and nothing helps. One time I had it to work and it appeared after hours of gameplay.

Edit: Found the issue.
CPU drivers. Most likely your GPU takes work for both CPU and GPU. How to test if your cpu is failing, see if windows apps run on gpu. Gpu should be inactive without games.

I reinstalled drivers twice and used geforce twice to reinstall drivers. Turns out it was CPU and I tried all of your suggestions and more.

[vodkamaniac]

if you used BETHini, then you most likely enabled the sun shadow transitions. i also have ELFX and uninstalled it to see if that was the cause of it. Shadows were still flickering but once i disabled sun shadow transitions, that fixed the issue. By default, that option from BETHini is disabled and its why those shadows flicker a lot when u move around the camera

Edited November 13, 2020 by vodkamaniac

[Glanzer]

Hey everyone, I think this thread is filled with different kinds of "shadow flickering" issues. I'd like to limit this thread to the original problem where all shadow completely turn OFF in the game when the character moves or when the camera (in 3rd person) moves. I'm posting my video again below so you can see exactly what I'm talking about:

 

https://i.imgur.com/pHlKqQI.mp4

 

Once I completely excluded ALL my game files from antivirus and changed my backups to run only once nightly (instead of continuously) I have not had a single shadow "flicker" problem. It has been weeks without a single problem.

[Gorgopis]

I also eliminated all flickering issues by excluding game files from my antivirus, by manually setting the update clocks on my software and services to once a day, and by eliminating unnecessary PC processes.

 

Since I prefer to play offline, I have noticed that the STEAM update service is pretty persistent and annoying and does seem to cause SR ctd’s. I have not pursued how to reset the STEAM update clock, so I just log on to STEAM, after my firewall does its update, and then I toggle ‘take STEAM offline,” and play SR with stable graphics.

 

And, for me, no quick saves, and no saving over saves. Also, I delete saves so that I keep my total save list to about twenty.

[Glanzer]

And, for me, no quick saves, and no saving over saves. Also, I delete saves so that I keep my total save list to about twenty.

Pretty similar here. No quick saves, and I've turned off Steam updates to Skyrim. I've never thought about physically taking down my network connection after the game starts, but I might consider going that far.

[Nolear]

My shadows were disapearing while moving. I was using Cathedral Weathers with BETHINI Ultra preset with recommended tweaks.

• Installed Obsidian weathers — problem still ocurred
• Optimized with Geforce Experience — problem still ocurred
• Changed again to BETHINI ultra preset with recommended tweaks — it now works just fine

Maybe there were some setting I toggled and didn't remebered, but... I just wanted to share my fix.

[neneXgod]

 

• Changed again to BETHINI ultra preset with recommended tweaks — it now works just fine

This one fixed the light/shadow flickering for me. Did you try to use the high preset with recommended tweaks?

[SamuelJMC]

To preface: I have had this issues for two installs now.

I'm not gonna post my load order because it's completely irrelevant.

First time I had the issue and couldn't get rid of it, I was under the impression that it could have potentially been ELFX, or any other lighting mod, even ENB.

I removed all of my mods from Vortex and reinstalled everything one-by-one and the issue was seemingly fixed. Even made a new save and it was persisting.

This fixed the issue for a little bit, but it came back.

Reinstalled the game completely. Installed all of my mods one-by-one again. Fixed very briefly.

I found this thread and saw that a few users with BethINI were fixing it by using recommended tweaks etc.

This is NOT the fix.

 

Disabling Sun-Shadow Transitions is the fix. (for now at least)

 

Huge thanks to everyone whos's been following this thread for months trying to figure out what the issue was and how to deal with it.