Changelog

1.4.9

• Fixed: contact shadows and the other passes on the sun now run for the player's camera only. They also ran for other cameras, such as PortalPreview's views of portals.
• Fixed: the grass radius has one owner among the mods that set it: Valheim Visuals while its own radius setting is on, then FarLands, then the game. Switching one of them off in the settings could leave the wrong radius in place.
• Next to a mod that sets the grass radius itself, such as HD Terrain, the radius is left to that mod for the world, and the log says so.

1.4.8

• The grass radius follows the GPU grass wherever it comes from: SteadyFrame 1.3.0 or FarLands 1.3.0. While its own radius setting is on, FarLands leaves the radius to it.
• The DLL now tells BepInEx its real version (1.4.7 still said 1.4.6).
• Contact shadows are traced by Bend Studio's screen-space shadows (from Days Gone): each pixel is tested against every pixel between it and the sun, up to 60, where it took 16 jittered steps before. Thin things - grass blades, plank edges - now cast without the steps' grain, and the pass costs half as much (0.067 against 0.135 ms at 2560x1440). Without compute shaders the old march still draws them.

1.4.7

• Reflections drop any broken (non-finite) pixel from each new render before showing it, so it can no longer appear as black marks on reflective surfaces, such as the dashes reported on the ice of the Deep North. Works with Smooth refresh on, the default.
• The grass radius (Vegetation.UseDistance, Distance) now applies only while SteadyFrame draws the grass on the GPU. Without it the game's own radius stays: there each 8 m patch of grass is a draw of its own, and 200 m cost some 3.5 ms of main thread a frame more than the game's 45 m on open land (2560x1440), against 0.5-1 ms with SteadyFrame.
• With the radius applied, grass reaches it. Most kinds stopped at 100 m of their own whatever the radius, so 200 m looked like 100 m on the Plains. Reeds and water lilies stay near: they are heavy or cast shadows.

1.4.6

• On a dedicated server Valheim Visuals switches itself off. The server's build of the game lacks the graphics code it changes, which logged "PatchAll failed" there.
• If a game update removes something the mod changes, only that part stays off, and the log names it. Before, every change after the failing one was silently lost too (on such a build: render-scale settings and the snow-speckle fix).

1.4.5

• Fixed reflective surfaces that could turn black and stay so until reflections were switched off.

1.4.4

• Caustics follow the water's real height, so they stay under the sea when a tide mod (Tides) lowers or raises it: no more caustics on the dry shore or on a boat's deck at low tide, and none missing on the flooded shore at high tide.

1.4.3

• Cloud shadows no longer put a flickering dark band on the world tree in the sky, and the clouds no longer shade themselves. They now go through the sun's own shadows instead of a pattern on the sunlight, so they reach as far as the game's sun shadows (about 300 m).

1.4.2

• Fixed black patches on the ground with Badger's HD Terrain installed.
• Grass no longer ripples: the game's own antialiasing is the default again. The optional sharpening is off by default.
• Reflections fade smoothly into their next update instead of jumping.
• New: the game's clouds cast shadows on the land (CloudShadows, off by default).
• Softer contact shadows and less water refraction by default. Configs that still have the old defaults move to the new ones.

1.4.1

• Stronger normals and particle lighting now apply only to the game's own shaders, not to other mods' materials.

1.4.0

• New: caustics, the waves' light rippling over the shallow sea bottom and what lies beneath (Caustics, on by default).
• Stronger normals and particle lighting now also reach materials the game loads while you play: locations, dungeons and texture packs.
• Caustics cost nothing where they cannot be seen: in dungeons, high above the sea, or in the dark.
• With the water settings off, or while ValheimWater draws the sea, the mod leaves the water's detail distance alone.
• Caustics fade under the moon, under clouds and in cloud shadows instead of shining as in full sun.
• No more empty squares in the sea at the edge of the loaded area: near and far water now meet.
• Reflections follow the scene within about a second instead of up to six (Reflections.RefreshSeconds).
• Caustics follow the waves, so no light on sand a wave has left dry.
• Settings window: grouped and ordered, the main switches first.
• New "AO even far": ambient occlusion no longer darkens the distance more than the foreground (off by default).
• Contact shadows and GTAO ambient occlusion are on by default; they cost a fraction of a millisecond on the GPU.
• The Preset setting is gone. The Right Arrow key is now the Compare key: it shows the game's own look and back for this session. A config with Preset = Off keeps the mod off through Enabled.

1.3.1

• Optional screen-space lighting, each off by default: ContactShadows (short sun shadows inside the game's own shadow map), Gtao (ambient occlusion of the sky light only, thin objects cast no halo; replaces the post-processing occlusion while on) and IndirectLight (one bounce of light between surfaces on screen).
• Fixed: with AugaLite installed, antialiasing, ambient occlusion, vignette, reflections and depth of field were lost after a portal trip or dungeon entrance and did not come back when the mod was switched off and on.
• The water settings stand down while ValheimWater (a separate mod with a new sea surface and caustics) draws the water.
• Fixed a dark ragged band along the sea's horizon: the distant flat sea started closer than the waves and left the crests sticking out. The far sea now starts where the waves end, and the detail distance is capped at 350 m.

1.3.0

• Optional TAA jitter spread and vignette controls, including an explicit vignette Off mode.
• Separate switches to turn off screen-space reflections and environment reflections.
• Custom render scale from 25 to 100%, with bilinear, pixelated or Catmull–Rom bicubic upscaling.
• Optional global LOD bias and a separate multiplier for loaded tree LODs; both leave the game's settings alone by default.
• Graphics changes you make later are kept, and the mod stands down if another mod takes over post-processing.
• Mountain snow no longer breaks into shimmering patches.
• With WeatherOverhaul installed, the water and reflection modules stand down where WeatherOverhaul owns the water or the reflections, and come back when it stops.

1.2.4

• Screen space reflections are off by default, existing configs included: they cost the most FPS and could stutter for almost no visible change. PostFx.SsrEnabled turns them back on.

1.2.3

• The Thunderstore package now depends on BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2351 instead of 5.4.2202, which predates the pack's fixes for the game's Unity 6. Nothing changes in the game.
• README: where to report problems.