It does so based on time derived noise. Plus you are applying VERTEX to your triplanar after this displacement noise is already applied to the VERTEX value. Perhaps it will result in what you want/expect if you shuffle contents around within vertex(). I'm not sure tho.

To be clear with noise I'm not referring to the Sampler2D noise noise.

    Megalomaniak sorry for taking a while to get back, but I did what you described I could do and it seemed do end up with the same effect. but something intresting I noticed is that meshes inside the water are affected by it.

    it could be that its somehow projecting itself onto itself thus creating the room like effect and it projecting atop the sphere, how its doing this Im unsure.

    heres a second picture as in the first one it was a bit hard to see the sphere I was talking about.

      And what happens if you temporarily hide this mesh and apply the shader to a planar grid meshinstance? Also what version of godot?

        This first line is only applying the wave to the Y axis up position.

        VERTEX.y += waves(VERTEX.xy, TIME);

        If you are using a mesh (not a flat plane) you probably want to adjust it so the wave moves along the vertex normal.

        For a flat plane on the ground, Y up is the assumed normal (what this shader it written for). But on an arbitrary mesh you would need the real vertex normal.

          Megalomaniak I`m using godot 3.5
          and heres how it looks on a plane mesh
          plus how it looks underneath

          and turns out it does the effect I desire but only on one side of the mesh

          on any other side it does the undesired effect

            cybereality that isnt the problem though as it bobbing up and down is part of the effect Im going for, the problem is that it`s projecting itself into itself.

              So yeah, as I already said earlier it looks like this shader was designed for a planar mesh and the waves work along a single axis.

              Megalomaniak The shader is clearly meant for planar grid mesh.

                  Megalomaniak thats not the issue though. Im trying to figure out which part of this shader causes it to go into itself. The Vertex function dosen`t seem to be doing this as its a visual effect causing the effect of it going into itself

                      The vertex shader is the only thing that changed the geometry, so it must be in there.

                      Stefo_The_Guy I was implying but should have just outright said that it's likely easier to write a shader from scratch than try and fix it. And should you look at parts of this one as reference while doing so you might even stumble upon where exactly the issue stems from.

                      BTW, if you want more help - particularly more useful feedback - your best bet is to share your scene/minimal project where you are experiencing this issue. Without it we are all just guessing here.

                          Megalomaniak When setting up the post I thought I couldent upload the minima project files and just left it with the shader and images. I again tried uploading the project file but as a zip and dosent seem to show up and uploading the tscn file itself dosent work as it says its not allowed to upload these types of files.

                              Ive started redoing the shader and noticed the odd behaviour again and it seems that reading from some values or textures cause behavious close to this, as when I made it read the DEPTH value insted of the DEPTH_TEXTURE it started flickering like the snow on tvs.

                              but it gets even weirder when I uncomment the z_pos declaration (which reads from the FRAGCOORD value) it makes the whole cube black with it occasionally flicker to defualt white or just dessapiering outright.

                              Keep in mind that we don`t even use the values we get from the DEPTH or FRAGCOORD or even change the COLOR values or any other values.
                              Final note when I uncomment the alpha declaration (which reads from the SCREEN_TEXTURE) it makes it go all the way back to the original issue with causing it to project into itself.

                              and when unshaded it isnt all just black but does this?

                              Stefo_The_Guy When setting up the post I thought I couldent upload the minima project files and just left it with the shader and images.

                              Aye, it's best to upload to say google drive or dropbox or such. Then just paste a link here for the share URL on a new line and it should auto embed. Worst case it'll be a link to the download.

                              edit: it's also worth uploading because it might well be related to a bug either in godot or in your specific graphics drivers perhaps. If it's a godot bug then others might be able to reproduce on their HW too, while if it is specific to your graphics drivers then only those with the same gpu and driver version might be able to reproduce it.