How to increase reflection view distance.

I’m currently working on a long corridor with shiny, reflective tiles, but one of the most important parts of this, is keeping the reflection uniform, no matter which way the player looks. However, whenever I move along the floor (especially in wide scenes) there is a noticeable cutoff of the reflection at either side of me, which breaks the reflection completely. Is there a way to make the reflection draw distance go further, so that no matter which direction the player looks in, the full reflection will stay?

Hey EoinOBroin -

What is your Reflection Actor Layout along the hallway? Are you using one reflection actor or multiple? Also in world settings, what is your Lightmass Environment color set to?

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Hey!

My Lightmass Environment colour is set to the default transparent/black, however I don’t think it’s a problem with this particular scene exclusively, as when I run even the example projects, such as a shooter game, I always see a noticeable constant falloff of the reflection at either side of me, on any shiny surfaces. It’s dynamic, and changes when I look around! I can record some footage if it would help? I know it’s possible to get full reflections at either side, since I have watched other footage of the examples, and can clearly see that they have the full, uninterrupted reflection. It could be a global setting I need to tweak? Most likely not a performance issue, running on a powerful setup!

Hello -

The Reflections settings are governed by the reflection actor in the level and for a hallway scene like you have I would suggest using a Box reflector as opposed to a sphere reflector. It is important that in either case your bounds of the reflection include the extent of your area. All that being said, try those if you are still having an issue a video would be most helpful in narrowing down the exact cause.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

EDIT: Also just to check do you have your indirect lighting built in your level as the reflections require that to render the cubemap? Also add a skylight to the level with very little intensity (unless you need it) and rebuild, does that help at all.

Hi EoinOBroin,
We have not heard back from you in a few days, so we are marking this post as Resolved for tracking purposes. If you are still experiencing the issue you reported, please respond to this message with additional information and we will offer further assistance.

Thank you.

Eric Ketchum

Apologies! I have been away from my main computer the last week!

I don’t think it is an issue with my scene in particular- any of the example scenes have the same problem, without touching any settings. I looked up a video which showcased the ShooterGame example running in the editor, and the reflection cutoff isn’t there for him at all. It’s pretty much a noticeable line where the reflections stop showing up at either side of the players viewpoint, which changes depending on where the player is looking. It breaks the illusion of a surface being reflective.

It’s quite hard to explain the problem, when I return home, I’ll capture some footage and compare it to the showcase footage I mentioned earlier.

I think you might be talking about Screen Space Reflections. That’s how they work, by working with what is currently visible on screen so they are cheap and realtime.

If you want realtime reflections on any angle you could use a cubemap render capture, which can be quite expensive. If you don’t need the reflections to be in realtime, you can just disable Screen Space Reflection in the post process volume.