Guild Wars 2

I appear to have a circle of light around me even when standing in shadows, with no light source equipped or in my vicinity.

This is becoming really disappointing, as I want to actually see objects and people and the beauty of the game without an artificial light source apparently emanating from my body. Check out the attached pictures and how the shadows change as I walk forward.

Now this could be a game bug or a graphical option I possibly turned on by accident, I don’t know. I just hope someone can help me turn it off. Thanks guys.

Hi, I am currently playing from 3 different PC’s (Work, Home and Laptop) and have this exact same issue on my laptop, but not on either of the other PC’s.
If it helps the laptop has a Mobility Radeon HD 5660, driver version 8.713.8.2 , the other PCs are both NVidia 8800’s.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine….. sorry couldn’t help it.

I have this same issue. Playing on a laptop with Mobility Radeon HD 5730, and my character also emits this bright light.

From what I’ve noticed, the higher I set the “shadows” on the graphics options, the bigger the light radius. Here are four screenshots I took, showing the shadow settings (low to ultra) and the effect it makes.

Low: [IMG]http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r575/Symbo18/4c05396a.jpg[/IMG]
Med: [IMG]http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r575/Symbo18/a414dd35.jpg[/IMG]
High: [IMG]http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r575/Symbo18/30b0c782.jpg[/IMG]
Ultra: [IMG]http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/r575/Symbo18/6a45c7ef.jpg[/IMG]

So, essentially, the higher I set the shadows, the less shadows I get. With shadows on Ultra, the light radius my character emits is so big I barely see shadows anymore.

I think what you’re actually looking at is the full shadow effect getting blended in at a certain distance from the camera. In some places, the static shadows (used at a higher distance) don’t seem to match the dynamic shadow effect’s results, so the shadows appear to change noticeably at a certain distance.

In this case the static shadows would have the houses (or something) casting a shadow on everything, and that doesn’t happen with the dynamic shadows, so things look brighter close to the camera.

As the shadow quality setting increases the range at which dynamic shadows are used, the odd-looking shadow transition happens at different distances depending on it.

Hmmm, interesting idea. Maybe the dynamic shadows are just not working at all on the Mobility Radeons?

@Insomniac

I think that might be the most sensible explanation. Fingers crossed that Arenanet will fix this issue (if they’re aware of it, lol).

I have Mobility Radeon HD 6770M and I have the same exact issue. Arenanet, please fix it ASAP!

Just received a new update for graphic card, it fixed the issue!

@DashinSixes

Was it an automatic update, or did you have to search for the update manually?

I just found a solution to this problem.

I downloaded the latest beta driver for my video card. You can get it from here: http://support.amd.com/US/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx. Look for “Latest Beta Driver” under “Latest AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for Radeon™ HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series”.

I’ve tried pretty much everything and that’s the only thing that worked. Trying to update through AMD’s Catalyst Control Center and the Auto-detect tool from their website did NOT work. I also tried downloading the driver and manually installing it, that didn’t work either. I just get errors and the drivers won’t install. Only the beta driver worked.

Hope this helps.