That's the bloom affect of the 3d shockwaves. That bloom affect is present in the medium quality, high quality, and very high quality 3d shockwaves. It's one reason i've never understood why people just love the low end ones, the low end 3d shockwaves look like crap, and as long as you have the medium quality ones you get shockwaves that look like the very high quality ones that run fine on most hardware.