[MC-51150] Swimming in water, riding a minecart or standing on soul sand and snow layers 8 darkens the sky at day time

The bug

In some situations the sky darkens when it shouldn't.

Affected situations

Likely incomplete

Sitting in a minecart or boat
Swimming in water
Standing on soul sand and snow layers 8

Code analysis and possible fix

The bug was introduced in 1.8 (according to the bug report comments) where they changed the client to track entities by their feet location instead of their eye location. This bug fix does the sky light calculation (for determining fog color) at the entity's eye location where it should be instead of their feet.

Source

Forge code changes

float f3 = this.mc.world.getLightBrightness(new BlockPos(this.mc.getRenderViewEntity()));

Linked issues

is duplicated by 29

MC-48871 When I go on soul sand, 1) the sky turns dark. 2) my hand also turns dark Resolved

MC-49130 Sky and held Items become darker when sitting in a minecart. Resolved

MC-49457 Sky darkens when standing on Soul Sand or in water Resolved

MC-50960 When In a Minecart The Sky light diminishes. Resolved

MC-54111 MInecart & Sky texture bug Resolved

24 more links

relates to 2

MC-47591 Held Items are black hile riding a Minecart / Boat Resolved

MC-139631 Light levels in the F3 debug menu aren't accurate when standing on soul sand Open

Attachments

Comments 26

kumasasa 2014-09-02T15:43:41Z

Reopening this, because the part "Held Items darken in Minecart" of MC-47591 is fixed.

Nathan Fox 2014-09-19T04:13:21Z

When in a Minecart, the sky only darkens on a flat track. It's normal on an incline. (And it alternates between and light when on a track that alternates between flat and inclined tracks.)

Sonicwave 2014-09-19T04:29:02Z

I think that this is due to the light levels being calculated from the feet instead of from your head (combined with the bug where you sit too low in Minecarts).

BoxFigs 2014-09-21T21:41:48Z

And light levels are being calculated from your feet instead of your head because of a bug fix in an early 1.8 snapshot.

Before the fix, the client referenced entities by eye position rather than feet position (the real coordinates). Now it uses the feet position, like the server does.

The sky darkening is dependent on the light level at the player's position. Since it now reads the position from the feet, it reads the light level at the feet, even when the player's eyes have a different light level.

What would fix this is to make the sky darkening read the light level from the eyes, separate from the other client functions that use player position.

Sonicwave 2014-10-03T01:56:49Z

Related to MC-31681.

16 more comments

Sonicwave 2014-11-09T23:59:35Z

Confirmed for 1.8.1-pre4.

Sonicwave 2014-11-25T02:20:09Z

Confirmed for 1.8.1.

yut951121 2014-12-17T17:49:43Z

Does this affects also on chunk distance > 16?

Ethan "derdiggermunster" Gardener 2014-12-20T12:35:18Z

Not sure what "chunk distance > 16" means here, but I have my draw distance at maximum and it affects me.

There's another bug involved in this which I've reported elsewhere: Distant sky should not be affected by light level at the player's position. Having it get dimmer the moment the player steps under a tree is creepy and weird. (It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Minecraft this year.) If anything, the sky should get brighter not dimmer when the player's immediate environment gets dimmer, but it's simpler to just have it unaffected; which would also fix this issue.

T Sawick 2015-02-11T03:07:00Z

I second the analysis of the issue offered by BoxFigs and Sonicwave. This is especially evident when swimming, as the darkening of the horizon seems to occur only when one's feet are significantly below water. When swimming on the surface, the horizon lightens/darkens with each 'stroke'.

edit: i.e. the light levels seem to be calculated from the feet, not the head.

Platypus 2015-05-25T17:51:30Z

Confirmed for 1.8.6

a 2015-06-24T18:40:19Z

Shouldn't this just be merged with MC-31681?

BoxFigs 2015-06-24T21:28:13Z

@ @unknown: This bug is when the player's feet are in the ground. That bug is when the sky light at the player's location is less than 15.

a 2015-06-24T21:31:35Z

Yes I know. But I think it's the same underlying issue.

BoxFigs 2015-06-24T22:04:00Z

@ @unknown: I guess I could see how it could be the same bug (standing in a block gives a light level of 0). However, this one can be fixed without the other being fixed (have sky darkening read the light level at the eyes instead of the head). Fixing the other one will fix this one, though (removing sky darkening completely).

Of course, it's up to the mods to decide what they want to do.

Sonicwave 2015-07-31T16:23:43Z

MC-84359 confirms for 15w31c.

Sonicwave 2016-03-04T02:41:27Z

Confirmed for 1.9.

Caty Lawren 2016-03-07T23:46:43Z

Only happens when the bottom of your hitbox is covered, not the top. You can test that by making a 1-deep hole in the ground and replacing a side of the hole with a fence, pushing a block over your head with a piston, and going into 3rd-person mode and looking around until you can see the sky. It's bright as ever.

Sonicwave 2016-06-28T20:13:09Z

Confirmed for 1.10.2.

M 2016-08-19T03:48:55Z

Confirmed for 16w33a

marcono1234 2017-05-19T13:50:51Z

Sorry, thought this was describing a different issue. Changed the summary back but can confirm this as well.

bemoty 2017-08-16T20:01:25Z

Can confirm for MC 1.12.1.

BillyGalbreath 2017-11-04T16:48:51Z

Confirmed for 1.12.2 and 17w43b. I found the root cause and sent a PR fix to the Forge project.

Elemend 2018-06-03T15:23:48Z

Seems to me that it's partially fixed in 18w22c: Sitting in a Minecart and bobbing up and down in water doesn't make the sky turn dark anymore. Standing on soul sand and snow layer 8 does turn the sky dark, still.

Elemend 2018-08-20T21:04:23Z

I can't recreate the Bug in 1.13.1-pre2 at all. All 4 Situations don't darken the sky at all.

pokechu22 2018-08-20T22:13:01Z

According to @unknown this was fixed in pre1.