Terco_Viejo said:
Would it be a problem in the parallax mapping system then? We were told in the
Dev Blog 13/09/18 that they were working on it...
Probably not, since parallax mapping is usually one of the first things to be calculated in a frame. On closer examination the reflections are using SSR (Screen Space Reflections) which is basically a fast post processing effect for approximating reflections. It waits until the frame is rendered, then draws a line on the screen between each potentially reflective pixel and the direction it should be reflecting in. It checks pixels at regular intervals along the line and uses an algorithm to work out whether the pixel is blocking the reflection or not. When the line "collides" with anything it uses the colour of that pixel to inform the colour of the reflection. This works because each frame is actually rendered multiple times for different kinds of data, including things like reflectiveness, base colour, and most importantly the distance of each pixel from the camera (depth buffer). The depth buffer is like a simplified 3d version of the scene where only things in front are included, and things behind aren't included. Here is an example of the depth buffer on its own, where lighter values mean that pixels are further away. In game this is stored as an array of numbers.
Since the frames are essentially rendered in 2.5 dimensions like this, and the palm tree is in front of the reflective line in some instances, the algorithm can't determine whether the palm tree is in front of the line or actively blocking it, so it just assumes the latter.
You will also notice that the reflections stop working towards the edge of the image. This is because if the reflective lines hit the edge of the screen, they automatically fail and show no reflection.
They seem to have ditched the planar reflections they were using some time last year.