Recent update seems to have broken skybox water reflections, any known work around?

I think a recent Roblox update has caused a Lighting bug with skyboxes and water reflections. If anyone knows of a workaround for this issue, please reply. Thanks!

Screenshot, expected behavior, skybox reflected on water properly:

Unexpected behavior since last update, NO REFLECTION if skybox loaded during night clocktime:

To reproduce this bug:

  • set game clock time to 2AM
  • add skybox to Lighting
  • set game clock to day time(12PM)

This has been working fine for years, now it does not.

When my games time smoothly transitions to morning the reflection does not load properly now.

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In case anybody is dealing with this issue. So far the only workaround I have found is to use the Atmosphere feature, but if you don’t want to use that you are stuck being broken for now I guess.

With Atmosphere installed under Lighting the water reflections work as expected.

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I was unable to replicate this bug, try restarting studio. Or if that doesn’t work send the place file if possible.

Did you delete the Atmosphere? You have to:

  • delete Atmosphere
  • set time to 2 AM (dark)
  • add skybox (if already there, delete it and add it back)
  • set time to day, 9am?

your reflection will not look right. (I will restart studio now to verify) But live games are doing this as well.

Well I was able to reproduce it, then in a stroke of luck I checked and unchecked Sky.CelestialBodiesShown and it fixed the glitch, (Make sure you do it during day time)

I don’t think that will ‘fix’ it, is has to update as the clock time changes, it is becoming fixed at various instants in time (like when you modified the setting).

I just tried it with a Studio restart and fresh baseplate, still broken:

Yeah I see what you mean, the water’s reflections really break when that happens

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Yeah if you set the time back to 2am, then toggle your celestial body setting then put it back to day time you are stuck with the night reflection. If you pick a sunrise time it will stick on the sunrise reflection as well.

If you add Atmosphere, it behaves normally, but my game requires the fog start / end which isn’t supported with Atmosphere.

Roblox is not dynamically updating the reflections if Atmosphere isn’t used.

Yeah, the problem with that fix is that my game changes the skybox every night cycle which effectively breaks the reflections. It would look bad to have the skybox change during the day when you can see the clouds.

Any change done to the skybox when reflections are reduced(at night) will freeze the reflections at that setting going forward as the clock changes. oof.

Instead of deleting the skybox, have you attempted to change the properties of the skybox?

Yes it does the same behavior. If you change it, it has the same result as removing and adding again.

Another thing I noticed, if a player joins during the day clocktime, the reflection is correct until the next night cycle when the night reflections will become stuck due to this bug.