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Add troubleshooting about the common issue of "bright ball" volumetrics. #192

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Add troubleshooting about the common issue of "bright ball" volumetrics. #192

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c9ac7ed
Enhance volumetric lighting troubleshooting section
lunairekitty Apr 26, 2026
e7e95fd
Update volumetric lighting troubleshooting details
lunairekitty May 14, 2026
eb8ef12
Fix spelling errors in volumetric lighting troubleshooting
lunairekitty May 14, 2026
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4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions docs/lighting/volumetrics/troubleshooting.md
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Expand Up @@ -23,6 +23,10 @@ This is a list of currently known issues and some troubleshooting tips for any i

* Volumetric lighting is shadow dependant, you need to make sure the `Shadowed` flag is checked when making shadowed volumetrics. If the flag is enabled but volumetrics are still leaking, then you might have too many dynamic shadows updating at once. See [clustered troubleshooting page](/lighting/clustered/troubleshooting) for more information related to the issue.

### "The volumetrics are just a bright white sphere on the light!"

* Volumetric lighting uses either the 50-0% distances or the Linear-Quadratic-Constant falloff to detrimine the length and size of volumetrics. Either of these needs to be set, but it's recommended you use the former for better control over the light. If you need some example settings, check out the [clustered quick start guide](/lighting/clustered/quick_start).
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@Smaedd Smaedd May 14, 2026

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I am admittedly being a bit pedantic here but CLQ/d0d50 are what lights use to determine falloff, the volumetrics don’t care.

It’s also not actually possible to create a light that doesn’t use one of these methods, so ‘Either of these needs to be set’ is redundant. Also I think ‘length and size’ is a bit misleading, these values are used to determine the brightness at a given distance from the light.

Some smaller nitpicks:

instead of Linear Quadratic Constant, use Constant Linear Quadratic

detrimine -> determine


### "My volumetrics are broken and corrupt!"

* Certain AMD GPU models are known to have trouble running the clustered renderer, and since volumetrics are shadow dependant, this issue relates to them as well. **If you experience this, let us know what GPU brand/model, operating system and other hardware specs you're using.** Clustered lights may also act weird when running the game on Linux under DXVK, however the circumstances in which they break should not be possible in production.
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