ReSTIR Overbright Bug in NFSU2

[unkempt locust]

On some setups of Underground 2, having ReSTIR enabled causes the scene to become wildly over-bright for no apparent reason.

I made this thread to hopefully get some more information on what can be causing it.

From @hollow kestrel: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1103377328530276403/1126185027953238117/image.png ReSTIR enabled, bug occurring , materials enabled.

Reference: #1103377328530276403 message

ReSTIR disabled and enhanced materials.

A scene without enhanced materials with ReSTIR for reference

And a video of the initial sampling for ReSTIR during the bug #1103377328530276403 message

[unkempt locust]

ReSTIR enabled, and materials disabled

[fresh dagger]

Okay, if this is occurring the moment you use enhanced materials then maybe it is related. I've been having a very similar bug in Anachronox where either a purple or red light will explode somewhere. This light can also be found somewhere beneath the map in USD Composer captures as if it were part of the game.

All you have to do to reproduce the bug in that game is enable direct lighting and make sure intensity is set to > 0 while a USDA of some kind is being read, even if not enabled.

[unkempt locust]

The strange thing is, I don’t believe the bug is occurring with actual light sources in U2. the bright red reuse part on the side of the building only has an emissive part, no direct light.

Although, it kind of looks like there’s a massive light source behind the rtx menu

[fresh dagger]

Yeah that might be it, its intensity value should be in the 8M range or something ludicrous like that.

Does disabling direct lighting or setting light intensity to 0.0 stop the light explosions?

Emissives are entirely unaffected by this bug in Anachronox so it'd be kind of crazy if the opposite were occurring here.

[unkempt locust]

Not sure, that’d be a question for @hollow kestrel or @uncut current, this bug doesn’t occur for me.

Another side by side of the bug: #1103377328530276403 message

[unkempt locust]

Is the intensity parameter inside Remix or OV?

I have a suspicion that something with how remix automatically creates an emissive source might be causing issues.

[hollow kestrel]

So, the bug happens whenever I have indirect bounces turned on in the pathtracer (which is kind of the point of using raytraced illumination to begin with). If I disable it, the game still looks pretty but I lose second+ bounces.
I tend to go to these crossings in the city because it is where the ReSTIR bug shows the most, but they happens somewhat across the whole map.

[unkempt locust]

RTXDI does use ReSTIR as well afaik.

[unkempt locust]

Does enabling/disabling the separate direct/indirect denoiser change anything?

[hollow kestrel]

Here a On/Off comparison

[uncut current]

For me, it only occurs in ref mode.

But I was aware that it appears during normal gameplay for people roo

Too

This bug is older than you may think

[unkempt locust]

Probably, but it’s helpful to compile all the info we can in order to get it resolved.

[hollow kestrel]

The first time I installed the mod and booted the game, it would be nice for some while and eventually while crossing this main avenue the lights would just go weeeeeee

[simple hedge]

I get random bright lights coming and going when in reference mode in call of duty. Is that related Adam?

[uncut current]

I have a bunch of info compiled when I initially reported it to mark. I'll try to find it. Burried somewhere in #general-remix

Yes

[simple hedge]

I'll get you a video for your bug report. Might help if it's happening in multiple games

[unkempt locust]

Is it just me or it seems like certain material properties just become emissive when the bug occurs?

[uncut current]

Also get the videos I linked to above

I didn't

Huh

#general-remix message

Here

I accidentally typed in nfs thread

[hollow kestrel]

Yeah look at this tree, it is grey without ReSTIR, and when I enable the Outlast 2's shine, it gets waaay overbright

[unkempt locust]

Are you, and anyone else, able to record the bug while going through the all ReSTIR debug views?

[uncut current]

I didn't do that because I wasn't asked

[unkempt locust]

That’s okay, now is your chance

[uncut current]

As I said. I'm hundreds of miles away from my computer

[simple hedge]

Try stretching

[uncut current]

I did

Didn't end well

[unkempt locust]

Does disabling/ignoring the tree foliage texture prevent the bug?

[unkempt locust]

Is there a certain material or texture(s) that causes it or show similar symptoms to the gray tree?

[simple hedge]

You can turn off alpha test and blended effects. Does that make a difference?

[hollow kestrel]

As I see so far, it usually folliage and seemingly the car window that gets grey. But I think they might be different unlinked issues

[fresh dagger]

It's hard to say, it usually just happened soon after loading in in Anachronox. For a while it seemed like it was caused by a procedural swirly purple texture that's used in a menu.

[unkempt locust]

Those are both alpha/blended surfaces

[hollow kestrel]

I mean, the material getting gray and the overbright. The overbright issue doesn't seems to be caused by the greyed materials 🤔

[uncut current]

I don't remember seeing gray materials

[uncut current]

What GPU are you running?

[hollow kestrel]

3060

[unkempt locust]

If you look closely at the tree with ReSTIR off, you can see all the fireflies on it.

[hollow kestrel]

It is actually quite stable with ReSTIR off

[uncut current]

I don't get why for some people it only appears in ref mode, and for others it happens during gameplay

My theory is that weaker cards suffer from overbright during normal gameplay, while stronger ones only get it in ref mode.

[unkempt locust]

Could you do it with the debug view of final output pretonemap with the EV view enabled?

[uncut current]

Have you tried turning dlss off?

Hmm :/

[unkempt locust]

I don’t regularly use ref mode. So maybe that’s why I never encountered it

[uncut current]

Do it

Now

[hollow kestrel]

I noticed that it dependes almost linearly on how many lights are considered in this RIS variable

[uncut current]

I have an idea. EMAN. Can you go to rtx.conf, and delete all the entries in "light texture"?

[hollow kestrel]

ranging from -6 to 4 the almost doesn't shows up

[hollow kestrel]

The if I enable ReSTIR

[uncut current]

https://tenor.com/view/scout-gif-25786536

[hollow kestrel]

Well, still the same

Would be the rtx.lightConverter variable, right?

[unkempt locust]

The hot spots on the tree foliage seem to be really suspicious imo

[uncut current]

In all my experience, it seems like the light always starts from off camera.

[hollow kestrel]

Well I deleted every texture array in the rtx.conf just to check and it still persists

[uncut current]

Strange

[unkempt locust]

There’s some setting that automatically adds emission to textures right?

[hollow kestrel]

Is scene scale supposed to change anything when you adjust it in game?

[unkempt locust]

It can if there’s light sources

[hollow kestrel]

Best I can think of is legacy material overwrites

[uncut current]

I think. It's some sort of feedback loop. Because it only happens with indirect lighting. Could literally just be a bad formula somewhere in the remix code.

[unkempt locust]

If you disable the legacy textures does it stop the bug?

[hollow kestrel]

Nope, if you mean "Use albedo/opacity Texture" option

[unkempt locust]

What if you disable enhanced materials as well?

[uncut current]

Well, I'm gonna try to sleep. This bus is fucking uncomfortable.

You boys have fun bug hunting

[unkempt locust]

[hollow kestrel]

Nope, still bright

[unkempt locust]

Can you capture the frame and see if there’s the massive source that @fresh dagger saw in his testing ?

[fresh dagger]

It shouldn't be hard to find if it's in the scene, just search for light_ and you'll find a point light that decided today it wants to be a supernova.

[thick gazelle]

This is gonna be dumb cause I can’t search the thread but you guys checked the tonemapping right?

Some settings make lights blindingly bright in tonemapping and it changes with distance and such

[hollow kestrel]

Yeah I'm looking here, but is hard to track. It depends on the exact capture you make. I made one and found some lights with 800+ intensity, but they are outside the culling tested region, and when I drive until there and capture the frame again, the new capture doesn't comes with it

[fresh dagger]

I don't think tonemapping will help if it's the bug I'm thinking of, since that would be a post-process-- this would be a case of the game reading nonexistent lights that are ridiculously bright.

Yeah unfortunately the ghost lights don't have stable hashes, I tried replacing them with 0.0 intensity lights in Anachronox to no avail.

[hollow kestrel]

Yup. Using the debug view we figured out that the problem is happening before tonemapping is even applied

[thick gazelle]

Just making sure cause I thought the same in another game but tonemapping was my issue

[hollow kestrel]

I wish ours was that simple too, it is annoying af

[hollow kestrel]

So you've also faced random source lights like this?

[unkempt locust]

Does disabling anti light culling do anything?

[fresh dagger]

Yep, it still happens in Anachronox frequently without effect lighting disabled.

[hollow kestrel]

(FLASHBANG WARNING) Wow, that didn't help with the brightness, but helped finding out the exact camera angle in which something gets culled out and the overbright goes away. We're getting closer guys

[unkempt locust]

Hm. Hopefully I can get it to occur with ref mode enabled and I can assist with finding it.

It doesn’t occur with enchanted assets enabled correct?

[hollow kestrel]

Actually it does

Nevermind, It doesn't. Aaaahhh

[unkempt locust]

Ah, so it’s still something with the enhanced materials in our case, since toggling that causes it to stop right?

[simple hedge]

is this what you guys are seeing (ignore the fog turning on, pressed a hotkey by mistake)

[unkempt locust]

Yep

[hollow kestrel]

Yup, I think this is it guys. Some light sources are evolving to stars and whenever they get rendered, they blowup the game. ReSTIR is probably just doing its job right, but those light sources are getting in the way
In NFSU2 case, I run around almost the whole city and the problem seems to be the city center's East Tunnel, access to Beacon Hills

[unkempt locust]

Do you guys have light transition turned off? For all points, distant etc.

[hollow kestrel]

Also, the problem seems to be introduced specifically by mod_lights.usda

[hollow kestrel]

gees... finally got the culprit. Since opening the file in OV wasn't helping, I had to binary search through the 114 lights in the mod_lights.usda. This big boy:

over "mesh_D537E513276AB8EF"
{
    custom int preserveOriginalDrawCall = 1

    def SphereLight "SphereLight" (
        prepend apiSchemas = ["ShapingAPI"]
    )
    {
        float colorTemperature = 6000
        bool enableColorTemperature = 0
        float exposure = 6.5
        float intensity = 8
        float radius = 0.05
        float shaping:cone:angle = 100
        float shaping:cone:softness = 0.25
        float shaping:focus = 25
        color3f shaping:focusTint = (1, 1.01, 1.01)
        asset shaping:ies:file
        bool treatAsPoint = 1
        bool visibleInPrimaryRay = 0
        double3 xformOp:rotateXYZ = (0, 0, 0)
        double3 xformOp:scale = (1, 1, 1)
        double3 xformOp:translate = (4.300000064074993, 4.700000070035458, 5.4000000804662704)
        uniform token[] xformOpOrder = ["xformOp:translate", "xformOp:rotateXYZ", "xformOp:scale"]
    }
}

When removed, the ReSTIR blessing goes away, but the East Tunnel gets no lights then

I'm in peace 🙏

[uncut current]

I wonder what's wrong here

[hollow kestrel]

Me too, but for now I'll just drop it

[wheat bear]

I have the overbrighting issue too when i Come to Some places in the map (while i have ReSTIR enabled)

[wheat bear]

I‘ve allready told, that something is wrong with the lights 😂😅

[hollow kestrel]

Yeah haha. It is now solved if you grab the latest stuff from the repo