1.21.4 Wakes Flickering with BSL Shaders

[StarSixty]

When using BSL shaders, wakes either doesn't display correctly on the water or flashes rapidly almost like it's z-fighting. I use to have no issues on BSL but playing on newer versions of Minecraft seems to produce this issue with wakes. I'm using BSL version 8.4.02.2 (Latest as of making this post).

I can't get this issue to produce itself on other shader packs, just BSL. This isn't an issue with animated water, it's an issue with the way that BSL renders water and wakes not appearing correctly as a result.

Enable BSL then disable wave animations by going into Environment > Animations > Water and turning it off then move around in the water with Wakes. You should see the flickering

I'm unable to send a screenshot that would be helpful since it's flickering, it'll either be an image of water with wakes or without wakes rendering. I can provide a video though if someone requests it.

I don't know if it's applicable here, but I'm running Minecraft on Windows using a AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card. I've tried updating my graphics drivers and the issue doesn't resolve itself.

Versions I'm using:
Minecraft 1.21.4
Fabric (Feather Launcher)
Wakes 0.4.1+1.12.4
Cloth Config API 17.0.144+fabric

I've tried playing around with multiple settings in both Wakes and BSL, other shader packs appear to not have this issue but I'd prefer to use BSL as I've been unable to achieve the visual style I want with other packs.

From testing it seems to a problem with how BSL and Wakes render that clashes, if the wakes particles are under the surface of the water they just don't render all together, if I could find a way to lower the water level of source blocks or raise the height of particles so they're floating just off the water the issue would be solved. I have found some options in Wakes titled things like "Height", "Depth", "Offset", "Gap" but after playing around with all of these values I can't see any visual change made at all with or without shaders... if someone could shed some light on something I may have missed I'd be really grateful.

[StarSixty]

I'd like to add more labels to this but I can't for the life of me figure out how, sorry I made a github account specifically to get help with this...

[Goby56]

The height and depth options you ate seeing is for the splash planes that are above the water on either side of the boat.

I could add an option to help users adjust the height at which the wakes render.

Are you sure though that it is for this reason the wakes are flickering? It does sound like the wavy water still isn't off.

If you could send a video it would be great!

[StarSixty]

Sure, here's a video: https://youtu.be/odvVnVPkyHo

I talked over it and also showed a few things I've already tried. Honestly I'm happy to jump ship to another shader pack if it's easy enough to remake my settings but I've yet to find one that I can really do that with... anywho I believe it's just a problem with how the shader and the mod render water clashing but I could be wrong... If you have anything you'd like me to try let me know and if you need any more info I'll try to get back as soon as I can. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

[Goby56]

Thank you for your in depth explanation of the issue! It does seem like z-fighting like you said. I could add a height slider to offset the wakes a bit. It will have to wait a while though as I don't really have much time working at the mod at the moment.

[CaptTatsu]

The flickering comes from BSL's selective TAA, where some stuff (including wakes ripple) aren't jittered.
I'll share a development version which fixes the flickering later this week.

[StarSixty]

Thank you very much! I really appreciate the support. Will that development version be compatible with 1.21.4? (Version I'm currently using to play with my friends, if not that's ok I just thought I'd ask)

I hope you both have a good one!

[blackmidiuser]

Thank you for your in depth explanation of the issue! It does seem like z-fighting like you said. I could add a height slider to offset the wakes a bit. It will have to wait a while though as I don't really have much time working at the mod at the moment.

I found a fix!

You can turn off TAA and it will stop z-fighting.

[blackmidiuser]

This is under Anti-aliasing.

[StarSixty]

Thank you for your in depth explanation of the issue! It does seem like z-fighting like you said. I could add a height slider to offset the wakes a bit. It will have to wait a while though as I don't really have much time working at the mod at the moment.

I found a fix!

You can turn off TAA and it will stop z-fighting.

I see! Thank you for letting me know about this, I'll definitely try it next chance I get.

This issue is a bit strange though, I didn't have the words for it before but from what I can tell BSL's water is masking the wakes particles, like if the wakes texture is above the surface of the water it renders fine but if it's below then it just doesn't render at all... it appears to have a z-fighting look to it when the water is completely still but it doesn't seem to have the right characteristics if that makes sense, like what I'd expect like z-fighting is the two surfaces flashing in a jumbled mess, almost like static trying to render over one another but this is more or less random blinking/flashing of the whole texture ig.

Hard to put into words because I don't have all the lingo but it definitely seems like there's some property in the water shader BSL uses that does not like wakes at all, might have something to do with the property boats have where water inside them is culled? Who knows.

Anyway thank you again for letting me know about this, I appreciate you taking the time to find a fix for it :)

[blackmidiuser]

Thank you for your in depth explanation of the issue! It does seem like z-fighting like you said. I could add a height slider to offset the wakes a bit. It will have to wait a while though as I don't really have much time working at the mod at the moment.

I found a fix!

You can turn off TAA and it will stop z-fighting.

I see! Thank you for letting me know about this, I'll definitely try it next chance I get.

This issue is a bit strange though, I didn't have the words for it before but from what I can tell BSL's water is masking the wakes particles, like if the wakes texture is above the surface of the water it renders fine but if it's below then it just doesn't render at all... it appears to have a z-fighting look to it when the water is completely still but it doesn't seem to have the right characteristics if that makes sense, like what I'd expect like z-fighting is the two surfaces flashing in a jumbled mess, almost like static trying to render over one another but this is more or less random blinking/flashing of the whole texture ig.

Hard to put into words because I don't have all the lingo but it definitely seems like there's some property in the water shader BSL uses that does not like wakes at all, might have something to do with the property boats have where water inside them is culled? Who knows.

Anyway thank you again for letting me know about this, I appreciate you taking the time to find a fix for it :)

Thanks, this took me a lot of effort to find a fix.

[StarSixty]

Oml I just realized I'm unbelievably stupid.

I did not clock at all that CaptTatsu is the developer who makes BSL, I kind of just automatically assumed they were helping with Wakes and didn't look into who they were at all.

Nor did I realize they were talking about anti-aliasing which I think is more sad... the information didn't process in my head when I saw "Selective TAA" I guess... I probably would have been able to stop the flickering myself if my brain wasn't a specimen...

Anyway thanks everyone for helping out, I do really appreciate it (even though I realized something I should have like 3 months ago...)

[blackmidiuser]

I've opened the pull request above this message to update it.