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Shadows issue


RoughAndTough00

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omg thanks a lot you always so helpful

 

Here are some settings I'd recommend for you to have with shadows to hopefully try and fix your issue. For your reference though, I play currently with shadows disabled, and you'll see why below.

 

Shadows On:

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/ShadowsOn1.jpg

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/ShadowsOn2.jpg

 

Shadows On settings

In Skyrim.INI:

fSunShadowUpdateTime=0

fSunUpdateThreshold=2.0

fShadowBiasScale=0.6

Note: The above settings help lessen flickering by increasing the time between sun-movement updates (2.0) and decreases the transition time with 0 or 0.1. Much better settings imho

 

In SkyrimPrefs.INI:

fInteriorShadowDistance=3000

fShadowDistance=2000

fShadowLODStartFade=1000

iShadowMode=1

bTreesReceiveShadows=0

bDrawLandShadows=0

iShadowMapResolution=256

fShadowBiasScale=0.6

iShadowFilter=3

iShadowMaskQuarter=3

bDrawShadows=1

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6

Notes: At 6, shadows contours are greatly blurred, reducing the blockiness of shadows. You can increase this higher. At shadow distance of 400, you'll get very crisp and nice-looking shadows around your character, but far shadows will not be rendered, getting a pop-in effect as you explore larger vistas and cities. At the other end of the spectrum, at 8000 shadow distance, you get nice shadows from far away, but closer shadows are very very blocky and ugly looking. 4000 is a middle ground, but since my system is weak, I chose 2000, some go even lower to 1000.

 

Personally, I couldn't stand the terrible in-game shadows at Low setting, so I ended up disabling them altogether in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file (should be located in your Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder NOT the actual Skyrim directory with the .exes and such).

 

Shadows Off:

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/ShadowsOff1.jpg

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/ShadowsOff2.jpg

While disabling shadows certainly improved my fps substatially, now all indoor areas are darker with only source of light, but no light falling over objects. Seems like a blanket of shadow is over everything. Can anyone help me get shadows disabled but still retain interior lighting?

 

Shadows OFF settings

In SkyrimPrefs.INI:

fInteriorShadowDistance=0

fShadowDistance=0

fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000

iShadowMode=1

bTreesReceiveShadows=0

bDrawLandShadows=0

iShadowMapResolution=256

fShadowBiasScale=0

iShadowFilter=1

iShadowMaskQuarter=1

bDrawShadows=0

 

I have a hunch that iShadowMaskQuarter is responsible for this "masking" everything under shadow (will try raising its value ) ... but I'm not sure. I'll try upping these values just slightly to try and regain lighting.

 

Best regards and I hope at least some of my tweak tips help ya out!

 

PS: All these screens running from my ole crappy lappy: Dell Studio 1558, single core i5 at m520 2.4 GHz and lousy ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 video card. I'm just lucky to get Skyrim running at a smooth framerate and graphics with High textures and decent object/actor fade distances at 7 slider (allows for archer sniping). Yeah shadows and other pizzazz had to go, but I prize the story, quests, and performance, over graphics for this gig. When I get myself a nice desktop then I'll be sure that it will run Skyrim maxed out. Still, the shadows are terribly implemented.

 

Most pressingly, It saddens me more that Patch 1.2 has nothing to fix or optimize Skyrim's shadows which I think are one of top priorities to fix and improve Skyrim's graphics overall. If I could play with optimized shadows and little to no fps loss, that alone would improve graphics enjoyment by about 60% for me.

Edited by NomadicAI7
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Progress Update: Was able to get Interior Lighting (and strangely Shadows) to work without much of an fps hit (1-2fps points below my Shadows-OFF settings)

 

Here's the only two lines I've changed from the Shadows-OFF settings mentioned above:

 

In SkyrimPrefs.INI:

fInteriorShadowDistance=1000

fShadowLODStartFade=1000

(Everything else kept as Shadows-OFF setting)

 

Interior Shadows Only 1

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/InterShadowsOnly1.jpg

 

Interior Shadows Only 2

http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab48/anuariman/Skyrim/InteriorShadowsOnly2.jpg

 

This way I got better looking interior and dungeons with lighting (and subtle/faint shadow effect). I still have no shadows in the outside world, but I rather like it. I tried to put shadows back in the outside world (putting distance to 2000, DrawShadows from 0 to 1, and setting ShadowMapResolutionPrimary/Secondary to 256), but they looked off and jittery (since shadow filter and shadow mask were kept at 1) However, interestingly enough, not much of an fps loss at all.

 

The largest shadow settings hits were Shadow Mask and Shadow filter. For example, when I increased shadow mask to setting of 4, I got 10 fps less, similarly with increasing shadow filter setting.

 

So now I've got interior lighting and shadows, at neglibible fps loss. YAY!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh, thank you so much. I fixed it modifying these lines:

iShadowMapResolution=2048

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

fShadowBiasScale=1.0000

Game runs in an outdoor average of 34 and an indoor of 48 with my pc: AMD 9550 Quad 2,2 GHZ, 2gb Ram, nvidia GT 240.

Edited by RoughAndTough00
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