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MC-97094

'Glowing' interacts incorrectly with culling of sections/chunks, causing glowing mobs to immediately disappear as the player crosses chunk boundaries

If a Glowing mob is in a section (16x16x16 chunk/section boundary area) with opaque walls, it can become invisible despite the fact that it ought to glow through the walls.

Here is a repro:

Make a basic superflat world.

teleport near x=128 z=128

run

/fill 128 16 128 143 31 143 stone hollow
/summon skeleton 135 20 135 {NoAI:1,Glowing:1,Invulnerable:1}

Notice that there is a glowing skeleton in the stone box you made. You can fly around and see him from all sides. This behavior is correct. Now do

/fill 127 15 127 144 32 144 stone outline

This makes the walls one thicker, so they go out into the adjoining chunk/section in all six directions. Now fly around the box looking at the skeleton again.

Expected: you can still the glowing skeleton

Actual: you can only see the glowing skeleton if at least two of your X/Y/Z coordinates are in the same chunk/section/chunk as the skeleton (e.g. you are directly above, directly to the side, or directly below). If you view the area from any angle, the skeleton immediately disappears as you cross a chunk boundary.

Speculative cause: a rendering algorithm is culling entire sections as 'invisible due to walls' without taking into consideration whether there may be Glowing mobs in the section. (This is supported somewhat by the fact that breaking a single block in the middle of the face of one of the walls you can see will 'fix' the problem.)

Implications if not fixed: This bug has implications for PvP (where players hit by spectral arrows can 'cheat' by hiding in certain areas), puzzle maps that rely on 'Glowing' mobs for players to find hidden treasure underground or navigate through hedge mazes, or probably various other scenarios.

Related issues

Attachments

Comments

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[media][media][media]
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Screenshots attached: Skeletons visible, but move just slightly across chunk boundary, and they disappear

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The repro steps use mobs, but this bug also affects players hit by spectral arrows in PvP

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This bug may be related to MC-63020, though it's kind of like its opposite.

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Man, Your a real bug hunter aren't you? And Yes if this bug is not case sensitive then It could allow for pvp glitches.

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When you have 3 blocks in a row you expect to see #2 when breaking #1.
This holds true for the box when you can see the outline of the mob. But when you can't see the outline something strange happens:
For a short moment you can see the wall of pink wool I have put behind the box as if there were no block in between. I assume this happens because the chunk in the middle isn't rendered at all.
Have a look at MC-111979 for more information as I think they are strongly related.

edit: this comment makes more sense if you watch Rec011.avi from the Attachments

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Confirmed for 1.13.1.

wobst.michael

Cannot reproduce in 1.15-pre7. Someone else?

j_p_smith

I was also unable to reproduce this in 1.16.1.

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(Unassigned)

Confirmed

(Unassigned)

Minecraft 16w06a, Minecraft 1.9.3 Pre-Release 3, Minecraft 1.10.2, Minecraft 16w43a, Minecraft 1.12.2, Minecraft 1.13-pre1, Minecraft 1.13.1

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