User blog comment:Scooter8pie/Transparency Bug/@comment-4501235-20111225054710/@comment-4583259-20111226060116

Why should it matter, new moon vs. old? You mean you can't get transparent walls until after saving the game?

In the very first few minutes of playing version 1.8 on my iPad, while digging a tunnel to redirect a trapped brown mob into a deep hole I had prepared for it, for quite a long stretch of the tunnel I was along a transparency boundary. I got this transparency just by digging along a superblock boundary, not by pushing my head into the ceiling (which I just tested, and yes, that method of getting transparency also still works.)

I went back to that moon again, and dug further along the same tunnel, and again got transparent wall. I even took pictures through it, (of an astronaut lair that is entirely underground, I thought I might put the photo up as an example).

You're right about the lighting thing though. I noticed it while digging a new trench on the surface, and it has to do with the changes from day to night, etc. Probably a side-effect of the "Brighter illumination at nighttime" change. I'll put a note about it on Version_1.8.0.