How to Fix SSAO Causing Dark Outlines on Thin Geometry

SSAO edge outlines are depth discontinuities misread as occlusion. A smaller radius and a stricter range check stop the background from darkening thin objects' silhouettes.

How to fix it

1. Reduce the SSAO radius

Shrink the sample radius so SSAO only considers nearby surfaces; a large radius reaches across the silhouette gap and paints the dark outline on thin geometry.

2. Tighten the range check

Increase the depth range-check / falloff so samples on the far background are rejected rather than counted as occluders for the foreground edge.

3. Raise bias and lower intensity

Add a small depth bias and reduce overall SSAO intensity so the remaining edge contribution is subtle instead of a hard dark line.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.