I set a (3,3,3) size [255,255,255] color3 0.5 transparency ball of Glass on the ground in a blank baseplate. I was admiring how cool the ball looked and was thinking about all the stuff I could do with this cool material – like stealth cloaks!
I found out quickly however that this is not feasible with lower qualities.
This is a bug, and if its intentional it needs to be changed. When I set transparency to 0.5, I’m expecting to see a 0.5 transparency part of some sort. Material should not make this entire object essentially disappear, because it provides an unfair advantage for some use cases I would like to see (ie, stealth cloak – you either get a cool effect that is still somewhat visible at 3+ quality, or complete invisibility at 3- quality. This negatively impacts lower-end users).
Much like neon, or any material, the extra effects may need to go at lower qualities for performance… That’s fine – but at least SOME defining characteristics should stay. With neon, you can still tell its neon because its super bright in colour (almost glowing like). Glass? It completely disappears. Please let us have more control over performance in our own games.
Last I checked, it was not possible to tell what graphics level is actually being used if it’s set to “Automatic” – meaning most players would be seeing SmoothPlastic in this workaround since you have to assume the lowest graphics level. Is there a way to determine the actual graphics level when it’s set to “Automatic” that I’m not aware of?
I believe this works as intended. In the slider range from 0.0 to 0.5, the material goes from “fully opaque” to “fully filtering,” and in the slider range from 0.5 to 1.0, the material goes from “fully filtering” to “not perceptible.”
In the case described here, with a filtering color of 255,255,255, it is letting all the light through, so 0.5 is “fully transparent” because it’s “fully filtering” and it’s set to “don’t filter anything.” If you change the color of the 0.5-transparency object, and it “comes back,” then this is what you’re seeing.
I have found that an effective glass color for “very transparent” glass is in the 220-240 range, and for “typical” glass is in the 180-220 range, although many other color ranges work great and look good for particular effects and artistic uses. (Also note that at regular/high levels, you will get the shiny reflection, which you don’t get at low quality.)
Clearly, we need to document this so it’s easier to find and understand, and we’ll take this feedback to do so. Thanks for reporting your experience!
